9 Point 9 Out of 10, Highly Recommend
by downn-in-flames
Summary: 2 bets. 10 days. Endless shenanigans. {A Brooklyn 99 meets How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days Jily fic}
1. Boys Like You

_THE BET_

* * *

At 10 pm on a Tuesday night, James Potter and Lily Evans are both rather impressively drunk.

They don't know this particular fact about one another though, because they're at bars across town from one another, with totally different groups of coworkers.

Although if you asked Lily, she really wouldn't be surprised to learn that James was drinking on a Tuesday - that's not too far out of character for him, anyways. James, on the other hand, would be absolutely gobsmacked to learn that cookie-cutter rule-follower Lily Evans was getting smashed on a weekday, when they've got work tomorrow.

She has good reason for it though - she's celebrating. She's only found out earlier today that she's getting promoted to sergeant in a new department, which is just one step closer to her dream of becoming captain of a whole precinct and then commissioner of the entire NYPD.

In other words, her entire 25-year plan is right on track.

"The precinct is going to be weird without you," Mary says, taking a sip of her beer.

From anyone else, that would be a mild compliment at best, but from Mary, that's practically the equivalent of an overly emotional hug, sobbing and all.

Mary may be one of Lily's closest friends, but she's always been an impressively impassive and private person, even with people she's known for years.

"She's right," Marlene adds. "Who's going to get onto Black every time he decides to do something ridiculous like fill the vending machines with rotting vegetables?"

"And then stop Lupin from punching him, because we all know how he feels about the office vending machine," Mary quips.

It's an odd thing to be passionate about, but Remus has an impressive level of dedication to the office vending machine, which is in all honestly probably older than all of them and can only be filled with candy bars because anything larger gets stuck.

Lily laughs - it's louder than her normal laugh, a sure sign that she's surpassed Three-Drink Lily. "You've got Kingsley and Dumbledore for that."

Marlene rolls her eyes. "Please. Don't get me wrong, they're great at their jobs, but when have they _ever _been able to rein in Lupin and Black?"

"When have _I _ever been able to rein in Lupin and Black?" Lily replies, before frowning at her now-empty fourth drink.

"You're able to rein in _Potter_, and _Potter _is able to rein in Lupin and Black."

Lily scoffs at that, because, in her opinion, she doesn't have much control over Potter either. And if she were more sober, she'd elegantly manoeuver right around that particular topic of conversation, because it's an viewpoint she's always differed with her co-workers on.

But she's just crossed the threshold into Four-Drink Lily, and Four-Drink Lily has conversational grace equivalent to Peter doing ballet. That is to say, none whatsoever.

"I've got no more power over Potter than either of you."

Marlene giggles at that. "You can tell yourself that all you like, but you _know _he has a thing for you."

"Trust me," Mary adds. "I have to watch him make heart eyes at you all day long. He definitely likes you."

Mary's desk does face James, so that claim is actually pretty plausible.

Lily still doesn't buy it though. "Oh please, Potter doesn't like _me_. He likes the idea of me."

"Meaning?" Marlene prods.

"He's created some idealised version of me in his head," she says. "I'm the hot coworker who sits at the desk next to him - it's practically a fantasy situation. And as such, he's built me up in his head as this dream girl of his - and _that's _the girl he has a crush on. Not me."

Mary rolls her eyes. "Fuck, I'm going to need another drink if you're going to psychoanalyze people this hard tonight."

"Can you get all of us another round while you're at it?" Marlene asks. "It's your turn to buy anyways."

"One beer, one whiskey Diet Coke, and one cosmo, coming right up."

"You're a doll, Mary," Marlene replies, knowing full well that the term of endearment will annoy her coworker.

"Fuck off, McKinnon," Mary retorts, before getting up and heading over to the bar.

Marlene almost immediately turns back to Lily. "Why are you so convinced he doesn't actually like you? What proof do you have of that?"

"Potter's the idealistic type, we all know that," Lily replies reasonably. "He decided I'm his dream girl when I got assigned the desk next to him, and hasn't paid attention to any evidence to the contrary ever since."

The other girl eyes her skeptically. "And that evidence is?"

"We're so _different_." Lily has no idea how that's not abundantly obvious to everyone.

Lily's the type of person who has a 25-year life plan. James is the type of person who can't think more than three days in advance - it's why most of the precinct has taken to sending him calendar invites for every little thing. Lily color codes her sock drawer, and James has had the same empty Coke can sitting on his desk for the past four months and eight days.

She's kept count of it. It's been on her nerves for four months and seven days.

"They say opposites attract, you know," Marlene replies, smirking. "But really, I don't think you and Potter are actually that different. Yeah, you've got different habits and whatnot, but at the same time, you're both fuelled by the same things. I know you say he's blinded by a version of you that he's created in his head, but you're blinded by an imaginary version of him too, babe."

"Am not," Lily answers stubbornly.

"Honestly, if you just gave him a chance, I think you'd find that you two are good for each other."

Mary returns with their drinks at that moment, which gives Lily a little bit of time to think through Marlene's comments.

Lily would be lying to herself if she said she didn't find James good-looking. It's kind of hard _not _to find the boy attractive, what with the dark, messy hair, the sharp jawline regularly dotted with stubble, and the cute little dimple on his right cheek that pops out when he smiles. Not to mention that he's over 6 foot and decently built - a bit on the skinnier side, but Lily's always kind of preferred that to the gym bro archetype - all of which puts him firmly in the realm of exactly her type.

He's also actually pretty funny, and some of his overly dramatic antics serve to lighten the mood on particularly stressful days at the precinct. And he was the first person to congratulate her today when the news broke that she was getting promoted.

So yeah, she's definitely attracted to him, at least a little bit. But she'll never admit to that - it'd practically be social suicide amongst her co-workers - and they'd inevitably blow it way out of proportion. Thinking a guy is cute and funny doesn't equate wanting to spend the rest of your life with them, no matter what Marlene may believe to the contrary.

"I'm telling you, I doubt he's actually into me like that," Lily finally says, taking the first sip of her fifth drink. "He wants one part of me, and that's it. The rest is something he's created in his own mind. He'd take me for a ride, realise he doesn't actually like the real version of me, and drop me."

"And I say you're wrong," Marlene replies, taking her cosmo off of Mary's hands.

"I'm actually with Marlene on this one," Mary says. "He's into you, full stop."

Lily hates being outnumbered. And she also hates being told that she's wrong, which is probably what fuels what she says next.

"I guarantee you that, if Potter knew what I'm like in a relationship - what he'd be signing himself up for in going out with me - he'd realise he's not actually into me," she tells them both. "Fuck, I'd even put money on it."

"And I'd put money on it that he's half in love with you, and 'knowing what you're like in a relationship' wouldn't change that one fucking bit," Mary replies.

"You're wrong," Lily replies, looking Mary dead in the eye.

It's a dangerous decision, getting into a staring contest with Mary, who could probably kill a man with a glare alone, but Five-Drink Lily isn't afraid of anything. Even if she is pretty sure Mary keeps at least one knife in her combat boots at all times.

"What's the wager?" Marlene says, breaking Lily's concentration.

"What do you mean, 'what's the wager'?" Lily asks.

"Well, you two both just made a bet, and I'm just curious what's actually on the table here."

"That wasn't an actual bet!" Lily defends immediately.

Mary scoffs. "Yeah, because you know you'll lose."

Lily whips around to look at Mary again. "I do not! But a real bet has to have a comprehensive set of rules associated with it, not just vague statements."

"Let's make that 'comprehensive set of rules' then," Mary replies, and the use of air quotes has Lily feeling like her friend is most definitely mocking her. "You leave the office in ten days - that's a built-in timeline right there. Starting tomorrow, you go after him. You take him out on a couple dates or two - no sex required, unless you just really want to, in which case, go for it I guess. You 'show him your real self' - but you're not allowed to dramatically sabotage anything either. If he's done with you by the time you leave the precinct, you win. If he's still half in love with you at that point like I know he will be, I win."

The speed with which Mary just came up with a fully-thought-out proposal almost shocks Lily, but then again, Mary's only been drinking beer the entire night and has an alcohol tolerance equivalent to her and Marlene combined. So she shouldn't be surprised, really.

"I can't date a coworker," Lily replies.

"Black and Lupin are fucking engaged," Mary retorts. "You absolutely _can _date a coworker."

Mary's not wrong, per say. There isn't anything in their HR manual about dating coworkers; it's a rule Lily's instituted for herself moreso than anything formalised by the NYPD. Future commissioners don't get themselves involved in office romances.

"You can suspend your own rules for this," Marlene adds, all but reading Lily's mind. "You're leaving in ten days - there's no consequences to this like there would be if you still had to share a workspace afterwards."

She… does have a point.

"Lily's just making up excuses because she knows I'm right, and she knows she's going to lose," Mary says casually, taking another sip of her beer.

Sober Lily is already competitive as hell, and drunk Lily is that intensified tenfold.

"You're on, McDonald," Lily says, slamming her drink down on the table so aggressively that a little bit sloshes over the side. "Loser has to sit through one of Peter's homemade cheese tasting demonstrations - and eat all of them."

Betting money might've been the original proposal, but the comedic value of forcing Mary to sit through Peter's impassioned explanations of all the possible cheese varieties is worth far more, from Lily's perspective.

"And has to organise Black's Drawer of Horrors," Mary adds, grinning wickedly.

One of the drawers in Sirius' desk has been filled with a whole host of terrifying objects over his tenure at the precinct - ranging from prank toys to food that's probably sat there for years. Even Lily, who gets a thrill out of organising pretty much anything else, doesn't want to get near that thing with a ten-foot pole.

But Lily won't have to. Because she's going to win. "You have yourself a deal," she says, holding out a hand for Mary to shake.

Mary reaches out and shakes it, gripping just a tiny bit harder than necessary. Lily resists the urge to cringe at the force of it - that's exactly the display of weakness Mary wants to see.

Marlene looks up from the message she's been typing on her phone and claps her hands delightedly. "Oh, this is absolutely the kind of office excitement we've been needing!"

Lily arches an eyebrow at her. "We work at a police precinct. You really think that's _not_ exciting?"

Marlene shrugs. "Taking down crime rings and whatnot is cool and all, but the juicy gossip is what I'm really here for."

Lily shouldn't even be surprised by that, really. Honestly, Marlene could probably have a pretty decent career in reality TV if she ever decided to leave the precinct.

"There's not going to be any juicy gossip," Lily says. "James is going to go out with me twice, realise I'm not what he signed up for, and that'll be the end of that. No juicy gossip involved."

"Whatever you say, Lil," Marlene laughs.

That's really all there is to it, Lily tells herself. She's going to win this bet, start her new job, and forget all about James Potter and his stupidly perfect jawline.

* * *

On the other side of town, James is on his fourth beer and absolutely thriving.

The four of them - Remus, Sirius, Peter, and him - are on a mission to taste-test every brewery in New York City. They're nowhere close to accomplishing that goal yet, but they've made pretty decent headway and enjoyed acting like overblown beer snobs in the process.

"Ah yes," Sirius comments, holding his drink out in front of him. "The hops in this brew are particularly pronounced."

"There's an earthy aftertaste to this one," Remus adds, swirling his stout as if it's a fancy glass of wine.

"And this one tastes like piss," James replies, completely ruining the fake-classy theme Sirius and Remus had going with their commentary.

"Come on, guys!" Peter says earnestly. "Beer tastings are meant to be a serious affair!"

Sirius isn't swayed at all. "They're meant to get us drunk, Wormtail."

James always wonders what other people must think of them when they hear the group of men calling each other by weird nicknames like Wormtail and Padfoot. In all honesty, James himself isn't quite sure why the names have stuck as long as they have - they were originally inspired by the first major crimes each detective took down when they were all assigned to the newly-formed 73rd precinct, and they've lingered ever since.

Peter took down an organized crime ring from the inside - he was the rat, as the ringleader so eloquently called him in court. Hence, Wormtail.

"You sound like Fenwick," James adds, before draining his glass.

"Nah," Remus replies. "None of us are drinking pilsners. Ergo, couldn't possible be Fenwick."

They all laugh at that - Benjy Fenwick's obsession with pilsners has definitely become a running joke throughout the office, despite the fact that the guy doesn't even work there.

"You're also nowhere near as much of a dick as Fenwick was," James tacks on.

Sirius looks up from his phone. "Fenwick wasn't _actually _that much of a dick. You just didn't like him because he was fucking the love of your life."

James crinkles his brows in disgust. "Fenwick is definitely not the love of my life."

Admittedly, yeah, Fenwick isn't _ugly _\- he actually kind of resembles a guy James had gone on a couple dates with in college - but he has the all the personality of a loaf of white bread.

Ergo, very much not James' type.

"You massively misinterpreted the usage of the word 'fucking' in that sentence," Sirius corrects. "The love of your life is the person he was fucking."

"Evans isn't the love of my life either," James replies defensively.

Well, not yet, at least. James could definitely see her _becoming _the love of his life though. He almost spilt his coffee all over himself the very first day she showed up at the precinct (he managed to contain the spill to one sleeve, in the end) because _fuck_, the detective he was supposed to be sharing a desk with shouldn't have been that beautiful.

And then she opened her mouth and James started falling for her even more.

So yeah, at this point, he's pretty hopelessly smitten.

And because he's utter shit at hiding his feelings, all of his friends know it, most of the precinct knows it, and hell, Lily probably knows it too. Trying to argue to the contrary is a bit of a hopeless endeavour.

Remus looks at him skeptically. "Maybe not love of your life, but pretty damn close."

James shrugs, picking up another one of the IPAs they've got on the table. "Doesn't matter much though - she's leaving the precinct in 10 days and I won't have much reason to see her after that."

When he first heard the news of her promotion, he'd secretly been kind of sad that he wouldn't have an excuse to see Lily everyday anymore. But he also knows how important getting a promotion and moving up in the police department is to Lily, so he'd given her a bright smile and congratulated her anyways.

"_Or, _you could actually make a move sometime in those 10 days so that she actually wants to hang around with your dumb ass even after she leaves."

James glares at Sirius.

"But you don't have the guts for that, do you?" his best friend challenges.

"Pads..." Remus warns.

Padfoot, like the dog. Inspired by the major drug operation Sirius had sniffed out.

Sirius waves off his fiancé. "Prongs, you're my brother, so I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you're absolutely shit with people you've got a crush on, and Evans is no exception. You just make doe eyes at her from afar and that's not going to get you anywhere."

He's obviously trying to get a rise out of James - giving him shit for all sorts of things that he knows James can't stand being called out on - and maybe a more sober James would recognise that, and let Sirius have his fun without rising to the bait.

But that's not the state that James is in right now.

"I am _not _shit with people I've got a crush on," he argues. "I just happen to respect Evans's boundaries because I don't think it's very professional to openly flirt with a coworker in the workplace."

It's not like the NYPD is known for its sexual harassment policies, so honestly, James probably wouldn't get in any sort of trouble if he _did _decide to repeatedly ask her out on dates until she relented, but he'd never want to make her uncomfortable like that.

Hence, his (slightly pathetic) pining from afar.

"I'm not asking you to get a harassment complaint filed against yourself," Sirius replies immediately. "In fact, I rather like Evans, so if you _do _manage to do something that warrants a harassment complaint or makes her uncomfortable, I'm formally obligated to kick your ass. But I'm just saying, this is your chance to shoot your shot before she's no longer one desk away from you."

Peter laughs. "Please. Prongs could never get Evans to fall for him in that period of time."

Prongs _could _refer to the antlers on a stag - and James _does _love rocking a good pair of reindeer antlers from time to time - but the true derivation of that name was from James escaping and diffusing a hostage situation using nothing but an unloaded gun and a fork.

But damn. Hearing that insult from Peter stings - after all, the guy has had an even longer dry spell than James has. Really, he's got no right to go around critiquing James' wooing skills.

"Could too," James replies childishly, only barely resisting the urge to stick his tongue out at his friend.

"Care to make an official bet on that?" Sirius asks, smirking. "I'll take you up on that one - loser has to sit through one of Wormy's cheese demonstrations."

"Oh yes!" Peter claps his hands together delightedly, completely missing the point that this is a form of punishment for losing. "I've been needing more people to practice on!"

"I'm not making a bet on Evans," James replies obstinately. "She's a person, not a prize to be won."

"Technically, you're not betting _on _Evans," Remus replies, serving as the voice of logic at the table. "You're betting on your own abilities. If you win, you've managed to actually nail the partner of your dreams; if you lose, no one is any worse off than when you started. This is an entirely non-objectifying situation on all accounts."

When Remus puts it like that, James has to admit that he's got a pretty good point. And there's no possible outcome to this that hurts anyone. Well, other than James himself if he fails, but honestly no more hurt than if he'd never even taken a chance with Lily to begin with.

He just has to… actually manage to charm the woman that's shown absolutely no romantic interest in him up until this point.

_Should be easy enough_, he thinks to himself, and almost laughs aloud at his own internal sarcasm.

But he'll also never turn down a bet - especially not when all his friends have been giving him so much shit all night. James Potter is a lot of things, but a coward is most definitely not one of them.

So he turns to Sirius, grinning wickedly. "You're on. But two rules: you three can't interfere at all, and no one tells Evans about it until it's over."

Sirius looks vaguely surprised. "You're actually taking me up on this?"

"Come on, Pads, you know full well that I don't back down from a challenge."

James isn't lying on that one. It's gotten him into a fair share of sticky situations - most frequently with a particularly problematic cop in the Major Crimes Unit, who has basically made it his life's goal to antagonise their whole precinct (but mostly James) on a regular basis.

"Plus," James muses. "You're right. I've got ten days until I'll never see her again - if there's ever a time to take a risk, it's now."

"You _do _realise she's still going to be friends with all of us, and she's only moving - "

"Moony, hush," Sirius waves a hand in front of Remus' face, stopping him from finishing that sentence.

The way Remus earned _that _nickname - and the way he stopped a major car chase in progress - is still a story that none of the boys can get through without laughing.

"So we've got ourselves a bet, Prongs?" he continues, extending a hand out to James. "If Lily falls in love with you by the time she leaves the precinct, you win; if she wants nothing to do with you, I win."

It feels like there's a significant gap between 'falling in love with him' and 'wanting nothing to do with him,' but James doesn't give that technicality too much thought. This is his dignity (and a cheese tasting with Peter) on the line.

So he takes Sirius' hand, giving it a firm shake. "Let's do this."

Ten days from now, he'll have made Lily fall for him, proving his romantic competence once and for all. His friends will inevitable find something else to give him shit for, but James will thoroughly enjoy his bragging rights.

Or alternatively, he'll be sampling Peter's homemade gouda, but James isn't letting himself entertain that outcome right now.


	2. Sucker

_DAY ONE_

* * *

The 73rd Precinct of the NYPD always smells like a mixture of burnt coffee, musty files, and the 'ocean breeze' air freshener that sprays every 20 minutes like clockwork.

That last one is solely Lily's contribution - damn, someone's going to have to take responsibility for refilling that thing once she's gone. Unless she takes the whole contraption with her, in which case the place will probably start smelling like Peter's feet again.

But on top of that strange concoction of fragrances, the precinct also smells like opportunity.

At least, that's the cheesy line James is telling himself, in the hopes of being largely optimistic about this whole thing. He's still got a slight headache from all his drinking the night before, but he's also got a really solid plan of action.

It's a pretty foolproof plan, if he says so himself. For all that his friends like to rib him about going catatonic around people he's got a crush on, he's _also _done pretty damn well at getting his fair share of dates over the years.

It's just a matter of applying those tactics to someone he already fancies something awful.

He just needs to channel his inner Aries, or whatever it is that his zodiac sign is. Marlene's always going off about astrology, and truthfully, James is usually only halfway paying attention, but he's pretty sure he's supposed to be super courageous and powerful or something like that.

He's going to need that today. He's not planning on asking Lily out just yet - he needs to take this slow if he actually wants a decent shot at her saying yes - but he's most definitely going to attempt to flirt with her.

In real life this time, instead of just daydreaming about it like he's so apt to do during staff meetings.

I mean, really, what else is he meant to do when Dumbledore is going on about 'the valiant battle of good versus evil in the streets of New York' other than dream up elaborate situations involving Lily and increasingly ridiculous pick-up lines? Pay attention?

In a burst of nervous energy, he goes about cleaning up his desk a little. It's a complete disaster, really - although James is more apt to call it organized chaos, because he knows exactly where every file is, thank you very much. He throws away the Coke can that's been sitting there for far too long, and empties his pencil cup of the various candy wrappers that have accumulated there.

Externally, it's not a massive improvement, but it still feels productive to James.

He looks up when Lily walks in. She's holding a large iced coffee, and James immediately knows what that means. It's her hangover drink. He shouldn't really be surprised that she went out last night - she just got a major promotion, after all - but she very rarely drinks enough on weekdays to warrant a hangover coffee the next day.

Her blouse also has one more button open than it normally does; James isn't sure if she's noticed that particular wardrobe malfunction yet, but _he's _definitely not going to be the one to point it out to her. He's also _not _going to pay attention to the way that that extra open button reveals just the tiniest bit of cleavage.

He looks up at her face instead, and that turns out to be a mistake. Because she smiles at him brightly - and it almost blinds him for the briefest of moments. "Good morning, James," she says.

For someone holding a hangover coffee, she's surprisingly chipper. Especially towards him. It's enough of a shock that the pencil he's been twiddling between his fingers falls to the floor.

"Good morning," he replies, trying to sound casual despite the writing utensil currently clattering on the tile. "You look lovely today, by the way."

There he goes. He did it. He flirted. He's doing great at this.

"Only today?" she replies, raising an eyebrow at him. "Do I not look lovely every day?"

Shit, maybe he's _not_ actually doing great at this.

"No, no, of course you look lovely every day," he quickly backtracks. "I just meant that - "

Lily laughs - it's a sweet melodic sound to James' ears and it makes him relax a little bit. "I'm only joking - I know what you meant. I just wanted to give you a hard time, is all."

He absolutely wasn't prepared for that one. Lily's never been _cold _towards him, but the vibe of her behavior right now feels decidedly different than normal. "Oh."

"How was your night?" Lily asks, walking away from her desk and coming over to lean against his.

James is trying very hard not to pay attention to her open blouse - even though it's practically right in front of his face now - and it's only because of that intentional avoidance that he catches Sirius and Remus walking out of the elevator.

"It was good," he answers. "Me, Sirius, Remus, and Peter tried out another brewery - I take it you went out last night as well?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Remus giving him a thumbs up and Sirius miming a lewd gesture.

A look of surprise crosses Lily's features. "How'd you know that?"

He realises that he's now dug himself into a bit of a hole, and the only escape is admitting just how much he's been watching her over the years. "I - er, you always get a large iced coffee whenever you're hungover."

Lily looks at him oddly - fuck, he's definitely creeped her out. "Huh," she muses, "I guess I do."

James struggles for words for a few moments, trying to figure out how the hell to get himself out of this situation, but Lily speaks again before he has a chance to. "You threw the Coke can away," she observes.

Now it's his turn to be surprised by her perceptiveness.

"I did," he replies, although it comes out more like a question than a statement.

Lily at least looks a little flustered by that. "It's just - it's been there for a while. Four months and nine days, by my count."

James actually laughs at that, and the remaining tension drops out of his shoulders. "Oh my god, of _course _you would've kept count of that, Evans."

"It's an awfully long time to keep an empty Coke can around, is all," she defends.

He looks at her endearingly. "You're really something else, you know that?"

Lily ducks her head at that, letting a curtain of auburn hair fall over her face, but it doesn't fully hide the fact that her cheeks are notably flushed.

He just… made her blush with that?

Naturally, it's when he's not even trying to be smooth that he actually succeeds at it.

"As fun as watching you two lovebirds is..." James looks away from Lily to see Marlene standing a few feet away, arms crossed. "Captain Dumbles called a meeting, so I'm going to need you two to keep it in your pants until later."

Fucking hell, he _really _needs Marlene not to say things like that. Things like that decidedly do _not _go well with the whole 'taking things slow and not weirding her out' plan.

"I can't wait until the day Dumbledore hears that you call him Dumbles behind his back," Lily retorts, flipping her hair over her shoulder and seemingly choosing to ignore Marlene's massively unsubtle comments about the two of them.

"Please," Marlene grins, "The Dumble-D loves me. If anything, he'll decide to adopt it as his official nickname."

"Somehow, I seriously doubt that," James replies, reaching underneath a stack of papers to retrieve his notepad and a random pen with a faded Flourish and Blott's logo on the side.

Their captain is… a bit of an enigma, if he's being honest. He's rather eccentric, but also takes his leadership role seriously. He's also just about as weirdly private as Mary is when it comes to his personal life, so all that James really knows is that his husband's name is Gellert and that he works as a financial planner.

Beyond that, he could secretly be researching dragon's blood on the side or something and the rest of the precinct would be none the wiser.

Despite all of that - and despite James' many jokes about his boss - Dumbledore is a pretty damn good captain, and James has a lot of respect for him.

When they walk into Meeting Room 1, Lily surprises him by sitting in the seat next to him instead of two tables in front of him like usual.

"Is it alright if I sit here?" she says, leaning toward him just a bit. If James didn't know better, he'd definitely think Lily was trying to weaponize that damn open button on her blouse against him somehow.

But even without the extra button, he's more than happy to have her sit next to him. Pete can just figure out somewhere else to sit.

"Yeah, of course."

Sure enough, when Peter walks into the room just a few seconds later, he looks vaguely scandalised when he discovers that his usual spot has been occupied. There's a moment where James thinks Peter might say something, but he apparently thinks better of it, because he walks over to Lily's normal spot, taking the seat next to Mary. James doesn't miss the way he intentionally moves his chair a few extra inches away from Mary - Peter's always been a little terrified by the other detective.

"Good morning, team," Kingsley says as he walks into the room, taking his spot next to the podium at the front of the room.

There's an unsynchronised echo of 'good mornings' in response.

A few moments later, Dumbledore comes into the room. He's always had a strange way of carrying himself - almost as if he's wearing long, flowing royal robes instead of his police captain uniform.

But if James had to pick out the single most notable aspect of Dumbledore's appearance - and the one he almost immediately commented on with a 'hello there, Gandalf' on the first day their new captain was introduced - is the his impressively long, slightly-greying beard.

Seriously. That thing is practically a work of art.

"We have widespread records of a whole range of various illegitimate activity from last night," Dumbledore begins, without any preamble. His speeches always firmly straddle the line between incredibly blunt and entirely too vague, and this one seems to be no exception.

"There were no fewer than seven bodegas all held up around the same time," he adds, giving much needed context to his initial statement.

"Why would anyone want to rob a bodega?" Peter interjects, sounding almost affronted by the news.

James is, truthfully, of the opposite mindset. Bodegas have everything you could ever need - who _wouldn't _want to rob one of those?

Well, not him, because he's an upstanding member of society who doesn't steal from anyone, but like, if he had to pick a place…

He refrains from providing that commentary out loud though, because Lily is currently sitting rather close to him and he doesn't want to do anything to disturb that balance.

"The fact that seven robberies happened at once is an indicator that there are deeper, more sinister forces at play," Dumbledore says, ignoring Peter's commentary. "We think that these were meant as some sort of diversion for something else."

"Like what?" Remus asks.

"No one's completely sure. There were also reports of strange activity near the intersection of Liberty and Prospect, but nothing that seemed to warrant police involvement. At least, not when there were seven hold-ups taking place at the same time."

James is paying attention to the meeting - he _is _\- but he's also currently contending with the fact that Lily's knee keeps bumping against his. He's not sure if she's mistaken his leg for part of the table or something, but it's throwing his concentration off just a tiny bit. Largely because he's not sure what to make of it, especially if it turns out Lily _knows _she's bumping against his leg and not the table.

Were it not for the fact that the four of them had all sworn to secrecy - and having Lily openly flirting with him would actually _help _his side of the bet - he'd really think one of his friends meddled in things to get her to act like this. Maybe as some sort of joke or something.

After zoning out for a minute and missing a decent bit of the captain's speech, Dumbledore clearing his throat brings James back into the present moment. "Because of this, we have reason to believe some sort of exchange is meant to take place in that same location sometime before this weekend."

"We're going to set up a rotating schedule of stakeouts," Kingsley adds. This has always been how he and Dumbledore have operated - the captain handles all the big picture information, and Kingsley sorts out the details. "McDonald and Lupin, you two are taking tonight. Potter and Evans, you two are tomorrow. Black and Pettigrew, you're taking Friday."

James can't believe the good luck the universe has given him this week.

Sirius, on the other hand, doesn't appear to feel quite as lucky. "Hey, why can't I have Remus as my stakeout partner?"

"You know precisely why, Black," Dumbledore responds plainly, showing absolutely no sign of emotion whatsoever. He's either internally laughing at the situation or still massively pissed about it, but James can never actually tell which of those he's feeling at any given time.

Nor can anyone in the precinct, really. Their captain is nothing if not confusing as hell.

As for the reason his two friends aren't allowed to stake out together anymore, the story involved a very heated makeout session in a patrol car.

They ended up catching the perp though, but not before the criminal witnessed the hickey on Sirius' neck and Remus' undone belt and started shouting something about road head in a cop car as soon as he'd been brought into the precinct.

James is sure Sirius would like to argue further, maybe throw in a comment about how he and Lily were paired together, and _surely _the sergeant is only doing this because _his_ relationship is a homosexual one - the gay card, his favorite one to pull even though the captain is gay himself - but the rules of the bet preclude him from saying anything about what James is trying to do in the next ten days.

The meeting carries on for a little bit longer, and there's further discussion about the crime ring that Dumbledore thinks this is connected to, but for the most part, it's nothing groundbreaking. They're dismissed eventually, and the only real notes James has managed to take during the entire thing are some terribly done doodles and the word 'Thursday.'

James takes the long way back to his desk, stopping by the kitchens to get a Coke out of the fridge. Remus and Peter are leaving the precinct to go question a witness, and he gives them both a high five on their way out.

When he gets back to his desk, the first thing he does is open up his email - it's filled with a whole host of announcements that he probably _should _read at some point today, but for now, he just scrolls through them all to get the angry red 'unread' number to go away. The process is weirdly methodical and soothing, and he can almost entirely block out Sirius' phone barking repeatedly - although honestly, who's sending him that many texts right now?

"I still can't believe you don't sort your emails," a voice says from behind him, and James jumps when he realises Lily is standing by his desk again. The extra button on her blouse is done back up this time.

"Why would I?" he responds. "There's a search bar for a reason."

"And you just keep a perfect mental record of the exact search terms you'll need to find whatever you're looking for?"

James shrugs. "Pretty much."

Lily laughs. "Unbelievable."

He feels strangely like he needs to defend his email system - not everyone can be as organized as she is - but he's saved from trying to develop an argument by Lily changing the subject. "So, I was thinking," she starts, biting her bottom lip like she always does when she's nervous, "maybe you and I could go do something after work today? Just the two of us? Like, as a date?"

Well, his perfectly-crafted days one through three just went straight out the window.

But even though his mind is positively reeling - because where the _fuck _did this come from - he manages to sound pretty put-together out loud. "Yeah, that'd be great, Evans. What do you have in mind?"

She grins, emerald eyes sparkling with something between joy and mischief. "You'll see."

"That sounds ominous."

"Maybe it is," she replies. "But yay, I'm looking forward to it."

She immediately turns to make the five-foot trek back to her own desk, but James can't resist asking the question that's been on his mind since this morning. "Where did this come from, Evans? We've both worked here for almost three years, and you ask me out the day after you find out you're moving precincts?"

The smile on her face falters for half a second - James notices that much. "I have a self-imposed rule about not dating coworkers," she tells him. "But I'm leaving in a few days, so I figured it's now or never."

He supposes that logic is fair enough. And Lily _would _be the type of person to have a complicated set of personal rules, really.

But damn, if she's only shown no interest in him because they were working together, winning this bet might be a whole lot easier than he'd expected.

* * *

Knowing that he's got a date after work has the magical effect of making the day go by so much slower than usual. He's honestly bored out of his mind filling out paperwork from a few small cases he'd worked on over the past few weeks - but there's a good chance Kingsley will kick his ass if he doesn't have all those reports done by the end of this week.

And Kingsley could kick James' ass easily; James passed his physical test to join the force and all, but Kingsley works out like three times a day. There's no way in hell James can compete with that.

"I'll text you where to meet me," Lily says, when she sees James start packing up his things. "Wear something comfortable."

This seems like it's about to be a very unconventional first date, whatever it is, because 'comfortable' isn't usually the look James goes for - at least, not on the usual dinner-and-a-movie first date type of thing.

Despite the confusion of it all, James actually really doesn't mind it. He's always been the type of person that _loves _surprises, and any surprise Lily comes up with seems like a pretty solid one to him.

He still texts Sirius for advice anyways. As soon as he starts the walk home to his apartment, he pulls out his phone and types out a message to his much more fashionable friend.

_ok lily said to dress comfortable, what the hell should i wear for this_

**_you do realise it's a direct conflict of interest for me to answer that, right?_**

**_i really should just tell you something to wear something absurd so that i win_**

_honestly, fuck you_

**_no thanks, i've got moony for that_**

_that joke again, seriously?_

_DO NOT MAKE A SIRIUS PUN I SWEAR TO GOD_

**_since you're so intent on taking things *siriusly*, jeans and one of your t-shirts that doesn't have a hole in it is probably good enough_**

**_ideally one of the more fitted ones that makes you look like you've actually got biceps instead of just being a goddamn beanpole_**

_ugh fuck off_

_but also thx_

**_you're very welcome_**

Despite the fact that texting Sirius for advice almost always turns into getting endless shit about his questions, Sirius is usually pretty helpful. And he was in this case, and James takes his advice, putting on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from a campaign he volunteered on.

Lily texts him an address, which he immediately plugs into Google Maps. It resolves a place called 'Indoor Extreme Sports.'

Which, quite honestly, sounds like his dream first date. A dream first date with his dream girl isn't too a shabby a way to spend his Wednesday.

When James arrives at the designated location, Lily's already there waiting for him. He'd thought he'd beat her by getting there five minutes earlier than when she'd told him to meet him, but really, he should've known better. Lily is never less than ten minutes early for everything.

She's changed into black shorts and a green top, and her hair is tied up into a ponytail.

"Indoor Extreme Sports?" James asks. "That's an unconventional date choice."

"You don't like it?"

"Exact opposite, actually," James replies. "I'm realising just how much I've missed out on at this point in my life by _not _having every first date I've ever been on at an Indoor Extreme Sports."

"Oh," Lily says. "Good." She doesn't sound quite as relieved as her words would imply, and James isn't quite sure what to make of that. "Nice shirt, by the way."

He hadn't even thought about it when he got dressed, really, but he feels like wearing a shirt with their current representative's logo on it is definitely going to earn him points in Lily's book. She's definitely raved about her at work on more than one occasion.

"Thanks," he grins. "It's always a bit of a risk wearing a political shirt on a first date, you know."

"Oh, shut up," she returns his smile, shoving his shoulder playfully. "Don't act like you haven't heard me going on about my political opinions for ages now. You aren't exactly risking me storming out of here because you're a Democrat."

"Fair enough. I had a bit of an advantage going into this one."

"It's the only advantage you're getting tonight," she tells him, "because I'm about to kick your ass in laser tag."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "Are you, Evans?"

"Absolutely, Potter," she replies, stepping forward so that they're almost chest-to-chest.

He's close enough that he can smell her perfume, and really, all he'd have to do at this point is lean down a little bit and he'd be kissing her. And fuck, when she's looking at him with that hint of a challenge in her eyes, it's pretty damn hard to ignore that particular potentiality.

But before he can successfully talk himself in _or_ out of anything, Lily spins on her heel, almost hitting him in the face with her ponytail in the process.

"Come on," she calls, not even turning around to look at him. "The game awaits."

He snaps out of his Lily-induced trance and follows after her, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "So, what's at stake here?"

"At stake?"

"What's the point of a competition if there isn't some sort of prize involved?" he replies.

"Touché." She thinks on it for a moment. "How about… loser buys dinner?"

"You're on," James answers, realising that this is the second time in a 24-hour window that he's made some sort of bet. "But exclusively monetary bets are boring, we need to make this more fun - loser also has to make a public announcement of their inferiority at the precinct tomorrow."

Lily turns her head toward him, looking surprised for the briefest of moments. "You've got yourself a deal. I can't wait to watch you make a fool of yourself tomorrow."

James scoffs at that. "Please. I make a fool of myself every day. Still going to beat you at this."

She laughs at that, and James quite honestly feels pretty proud of how far he's come in just ten hours. Yes, she's still laughing at him just like she did this morning, but now it's because he _made_ her laugh, not because he'd just stuck his foot in his mouth.

They pay for nine rounds each, get suited up with vests and guns that are essentially smaller replicas of the real versions they normally wear, and are set out into the darkened obstacle course. They're definitely the only two people here over the age of twenty, but James doesn't care much.

He _is _still a bit surprised that Lily's picked this location - it seems like something she might write off as childish - but he's not disappointed with the revelation either. If anything, her behavior tonight has made him like her even more.

They're both pretty decent at the game, consistently scoring at the top of their respective teams after each round - they've got a slight advantage over all the teenagers here given that they're actually trained to use guns and whatnot.

After eight rounds, they're at a perfect tie.

"What do you say we make up our own rules for this last round?" Lily asks, examining her laser gun and trying to look vaguely threatening.

"I wouldn't have put you as the type to go rogue," he jokes.

"We're not breaking any official game rules - I would never," she replies. "We're just making this sudden death."

James' massive competitive streak is instantly onboard. "I'm listening."

"Points are irrelevant. First person to take the other out wins."

He grins. "Perfect."

When they're both dumped into the obstacle course for their last round, they immediately head in opposite directions. James has his back to the wall at all times and takes corners carefully - even though this is a friendly competition, his heart is hammering in his chest just as much as it does when he's doing this for real.

They've been in there for five minutes before he catches his first sight of Lily - she's a full head taller than any of the pre-teen boys also playing this round with them and therefore very hard to miss.

Although that makes him an even easier target to identify than her, really. He's even taller than her, after all.

And it's apparent that she's seen him too, because she immediately ducks behind a wall, pointing her gun in his direction and firing aimlessly.

James isn't a complete amateur, so he dodges her random shots with ease. Instead, he goes about cornering her - he knows for a fact that the area she's hiding in is a dead end, and he has every intent of using that against her.

He's gotten himself plastered against the wall currently dividing them, fully prepared to aim at her the moment she tries to make a run for it. He gradually inches closer and closer to the gap in the wall - he's all but got her trapped at this point.

He's about to round the corner and fire when -

"Oh! James!"

He falters for just a moment, trying to decipher her tone, and that moment of hesitation is where he makes his mistake.

In a matter of seconds, he's flat on his back, Lily straddling him and aiming her gun at his chest.

"I win, Potter," she says, before pulling the trigger and making his vest go dead.

It'll turn back on in about thirty seconds, because their sudden death rules don't apply to the system powering these vests, but it's a loss on their terms nonetheless.

But weirdly enough, with Lily looking down at him with the most self-satisfied smirk ever, illuminated only by the red light coming off of her gun and vest, he can't really find it in himself to actually be all that disappointed.

He plays along with it nonetheless, feigning offense. "You played dirty, Evans."

She shrugs. "I like to call it creative gameplay."

"You just don't like that I had you cornered," he retorts, just as his vest comes back to life again.

Lily lazily shoots his vest again, just for the hell of it. "Please," she replies, rolling off of him and standing up, "I wasn't cornered."

"You're so ridiculously stubborn, you know that?" he says, laughing. "If that was a suspect, you would most definitely have called that being cornered."

"I _am _ridiculously stubborn, actually - I'm glad you've just now noticed. Now get up so we can go get food - I'm starving, and you're buying."

He pushes himself up off the ground - honestly, he's lucky this place is covered in mats, otherwise that tackle would've hurt a hell of a lot more - before answering her. "Oh, trust me, I've noticed for a while - do I need to remind you of the time you made Shacklebolt reprint the entire IT manual because you found a typo?"

"It changed the meaning of the sentence," she responds immediately. "It could've resulted in some fatal mistakes."

"Right, because someone is _actually _going to think they're meant to stick a headphone cord into an outlet because they read it in an old IT manual that's practically falling out of the binder it's in."

Lily raises her eyebrows at him challengingly. "You haven't hung around many of the beat cops then."

"See, but you assume people actually even _read _that manual to begin with though," he replies as they make their way out of the venue, passing by the preteens still firing amongst themselves.

"_I _read that manual," she says, unbuckling her vest and pulling it over her head.

"Yes, and you're a complete anomaly, Evans." He follows suit, hanging his gun and vest up on the wall. "Tell me, was there really anything in there that you didn't already know how to do?"

That one gives her pause, and in the light, James notices just how many strands of hair have escaped her ponytail. It's a little bit wild and every bit adorable.

"I - I'm sure there was something," she eventually insists.

"Whatever you say," he responds, smirking, because he knows he's won this one.

They go up the street to a hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant - James had briefly considered taking her somewhere fancier, but it's late and they're both starving; plus, he knows for a fact that Lily has really strong feelings about red curry, and this place makes some of the best he's ever had.

He tells her as much when they walk in. "They make a bomb red curry here - you'll love it."

She looks at him oddly. "How do you know I'm getting red curry?"

Shit, shit, shit - does he sound like one of those douchebags who orders for their date now? "I just - I know you're picky about them. You're always talking about which places do it well."

"Oh," she says, sounding a bit surprised. "I guess I am."

They get seated, and that brief bout of awkwardness fades away as soon as it arrived - it appears that Lily _didn't _interpret his comment the way he'd feared she might've. He knows that if she did, she would've already walked right out the restaurant door by now.

Dinner goes by with ease; neither of them are really pretending to be anything they're not. They're just James and Lily, the same way they are at work or when they're at some sort of after-hours get-together, but this time, it's only the two of them.

James quite likes that particular change of pace.

"_Fuck_, this is good," Lily says when their food arrives. "As much as I hate admitting you're right about things, I commend you on your restaurant-picking skills."

He grins at that. "I've gotta be good for _something_, you know. And since laser tag apparently isn't it, finding good Thai food is my replacement superpower."

"That's not too shabby a superpower, honestly," she replies, before taking another bite.

"I mean, it wouldn't have been my first choice," he tells her, "but all the cool ones were apparently taken by actual superheroes. I got stuck with whatever was left."

That gets a small laugh out of her, although it's obvious she's trying to pretend she doesn't find it funny.

"What about you?" he adds. "If you could have any superpower, what would it be?"

She thinks on that for a moment, pushing a few errant strands of hair out of her face. "Invisibility."

"Why's that?"

"Well, first of all, it'd make work so much easier," she replies. "Instead of having to actually hide out, you can just be in plain sight and never get noticed. Plus, I dunno, I always liked the idea as a kid of being able to just disappear for a few hours with a book and not have anyone come take the book away from me."

It feels like there's a little more to that particular story than she's telling, but James doesn't want to push that particular envelope right now. "When Sirius and I were younger - like, elementary or middle school-aged, mind you - we used to pretend my dad's old cloaks made us invisible. We obviously weren't, but my parents played along the whole time and just acted really confused when we moved stuff around in the kitchen cabinets or whatnot."

Lily laughs at that. "Why does it not surprise me that you and Sirius were getting up to all sorts of troublesome shit even as kids?"

"Oh, trust me - we were even worse as kids."

She shudders at that - but it's very obviously faked. "I am _so _happy I didn't know you as a teenager then."

"If you think we're annoying now, you haven't seen anything. The principal at our high school _still _tells my mom how many grey hairs we apparently gave her. Also that if either Sirius or I ever have kids and move back to that school district, she's immediately retiring."

"And yet somehow you ended up a cop," she replies.

"Oh, we never broke the law or anything like that," he immediately defends. "We were… admittedly, kind of bullies to some of the kids that were constantly going around spouting racist shit - and I knocked a kid out once for calling Sirius a homophobic slur - but for the most part, it was just dumb shit like filling the hallway with solo cups or hiding a bunch of alarm clocks in the library."

Much to his surprise, she's got a softer look when he finishes his explanation. "I mean, that's the most justifiable reason for knocking someone out, honestly."

James shrugs. "It wasn't my finest moment, really. I still didn't really have a grip on my _own _sexuality at that point, really - not to mention that Sirius is basically my brother - and the combination of both of those things and that word just resulted in me flying into an uncontrollable rage. I don't regret the first punch, but I regret a number of the ones that came after."

Lily just hums in response to that, and he hopes it's hum of approval rather than one of distaste.

She opens her mouth to say something, but they're interrupted by the arrival of the check. The waiter wordlessly places in in front of James before walking away, and James already knows Lily's going to have words about that as soon as she's out of earshot.

She does, in fact, prove his predictions correct. "God, like, I know that you're paying because you lost, but are we really still in the 1950s here? Are we really still assuming that there's no way that maybe _I'm _the one paying the bill?"

"We're living in a society bound by patriarchal norms, Evans," James replies, getting his wallet out of his pocket and sliding his card into the envelope. "I'm obviously the only one capable of being the breadwinner here."

He gives her a wry grin. "Honestly, I really _should _let you pay the bill - you _are _about to be making significantly more money than me, after all. That makes _you _the breadwinner in this situation, really."

"Absolutely not," she replies. "Absurdly sexist assumptions aside, I tackled you for a free dinner and I fully intend on cashing in on that."

"As you should," he tells her, just as the waiter comes back by and picks up the check.

Once he's paid and tipped properly - Lily hadn't been shy about ensuring he'd tipped at least 20% - they walk out of the restaurant.

"I can call us a Lyft back to your place?" James offers when they get outside, and it's only when Lily gives him a disbelieving look that he realises the error in what he's said.

Foot, meet mouth: round… probably like seventy-something at this point.

"I just meant," he quickly amends, "I only live like five blocks from you, so I figured it'd be cheaper if we just rode together and I walked the rest of the way back."

Lily's expression loses its edge. "Oh. Yeah, that makes sense." When James pulls out his phone, she's quick to tack on, "But I'm paying you back for half. I didn't win anything this time."

James just laughs a little at that. "Sure."

As much as he'd be happy to pay for the full fare, he knows that she will stubbornly insist on paying her half until she's blue in the face, and it's not really the type of thing worth actually arguing about.

Their ride shows up, and they fall into a comfortable sort of silence on the ride home; it's not the sort of thing that feels necessary to break, so James embraces it, sneaking little glances at Lily every so often, watching the lights from outside briefly illuminate her face.

She catches his eye when he does it one time, and smiles softly, like they're sharing some sort of secret between the two of them.

It does things to his stomach that it absolutely shouldn't.

In a much shorter amount of time than he would've liked, they're pulling up to Lily's apartment building. They both get out of the car, and as their driver pulls away, James finds himself automatically turning to face Lily, as if she's got some sort of magnetic pull over him.

"This was fun," he tells her, fully aware that they're much closer now than they've been for most of the night. "We should do it again sometime."

"Tomorrow?" she asks, with just a hint of mischief in her eyes.

"Damn, tomorrow doesn't work," James replies, feigning disappointment. "I'm supposed to be doing some sort of stakeout thing with one of my coworkers, and she's a bit of a rule-follower, you see, so I don't think she'd be too pleased to find out I was abandoning her to go on laser tag dates."

Lily hums, as if considering this. "That's true - you wouldn't want to disappoint her."

"No, I definitely wouldn't," he says, taking stock of the fact that they're now so close that they're practically touching.

They stay like that for just half a second, teetering on the edge of something, before James takes the leap and breaks the mounting tension between them. "I'm going to kiss you, if that's alright."

Lily gives the tiniest of nods, and that's the exact answer James needs to close what's left of the space between them and put his lips on hers.

And if Lily's smiles did things to his stomach, her kisses go straight to his head. It was only meant to be a quick thing - a soft goodbye gesture - but the way that Lily's arms almost immediately wrap around his neck and her fingers slide into the hair at the nape of his neck suggests that while this kiss may be many things,'quick' is most definitely not among them.

His hands instantly find her waist, pulling her into him even tighter than before. The intensity very quickly ratchets up a few levels, and soon enough he's got her back against the brick wall of her building, doing his best to memorise the feeling of her lips and the way her body molds so perfectly into his.

This is so much more than a simple goodnight kiss - this is pure electricity between the two of them that he both wasn't expecting and is somehow entirely unsurprised by. It's Lily, of course, how could he have expected it to be anything other than fucking amazing, but _fucking hell_.

Were it not for the very pointed coughs of a few passersby, he would very happily stay in this exact position for the rest of his goddamn life.

But he takes the hint from the people walking by, and forces himself to pull back. And he very quickly adds this moment to the list of things he wants to memorise, because Lily's flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes in the dimly lit street are a masterpiece he never wants to forget.

Lily takes a few moments to get her bearings, as if kissing him had quite literally made her forget where she was. He feels oddly proud of that.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," she says after a moment, dropping her arms from their place around his neck and immediately digging into her crossbody bag to retrieve her keys.

"See you tomorrow, Lily," he replies, giving her a dumb half-wave before turning and walking down the street.

He'd be lying if he said he didn't spent the entire five-block walk home with a little extra spring in his step, or if he acted like he was able to wipe the slightly-dopey grin off his face until a full ten minutes after he got home, or if he pretended like he didn't spend at least fifteen minutes telling his cat _exactly _how well his date went.

He falls asleep feeling about a million times more confident about winning this bet than he did when he woke up this morning.


	3. Woman Like Me

_DAY TWO_

* * *

In contrast, Lily wakes up on the second day of the bet feeling much less confident than she did on day one.

She really thought she'd shown off some of her worst traits yesterday - all under the guise of a sweet date, but still enough to at least create some sort of hesitation in James - but it seems that nothing of the sort was accomplished.

After the overly flirtatious beginning, which clearly just about stunned the pants off of him at first, she went about subtly showing off some of her 'worst' traits - that is, the ones that previous boyfriends had always had issues with. She got onto him for how he organised (or didn't organise) his emails, she took complete control of both asking him out and planning the entire date, and she'd picked something that showed off how ruthlessly competitive she was.

None of those things - overly nitpicky, dominant, competitive - are ever seen as remotely positive traits in a woman. (Which is perhaps an issue of ingrained societal gender norms and expectations, but that's an issue for another time. She can address that particular issue when her pride isn't on the line.)

And yet, when he'd kissed her at the end of the night, it was with so much affection and fervor that Lily still gets a little dizzy just thinking about it. She can't remember the last time a first kiss with a guy sent that much warmth through her veins - if it _ever_ did.

But, she supposes, it was only the first date. Everyone experiences a first date in rose-coloured glasses from time to time. There's still nine other days to prove to him just how incompatible they really are.

Of course, there's also the totally separate fact that last night _also _showed her a totally different side of James than she'd expected to see - the type that owned up to his past mistakes, that kept up with her constant teasing and gave it back just as good, that surprised her again and again.

It was really his perceptiveness that got to her - the way he'd clearly caught onto some of her habits over the years, like always ordering a large iced coffee the morning after a night out or always getting red curry at Thai restaurants. It's just the tiniest of red flags that maybe, just maybe, her original theory surrounding James' crush on her was wrong.

And she well and truly enjoyed herself last night. It easily earned a spot in one of her top five best first dates of all time, which is _such _a concerning thing considering her whole goal here is to get James to dump her.

All of these thoughts are just wildly buzzing around her head as she makes herself a cup of tea, making it completely impossible to have anything close to a nice, calming morning.

And she'd really been hoping for one of those - between the inevitable grilling she's going to get from Marlene (as Mary listens in but acts entirely nonchalant about it) at work and the fact that she's going to be on a stakeout until god knows when tonight, a moment of peace would've been nice preparation for all of that.

But no, her stupid brain can't even manage that much.

Lily's normally rather proud of her Type A, borderline-perfectionist tendencies; but right now, when her brain is doing that thing where it thinks itself into a never-ending spiral, not so much.

Once she's finished her tea and gotten dressed - doing up all the buttons this time - she leaves for work.

She lives walking distance from the 73rd precinct - she's always loved being able to make the trek to and from work on foot when the weather allows it, and it's something she's going to miss at her new position, where she'll likely have to take the subway up a few stops or get used to calling a Lyft every time.

And sure, she _could _move, but why would she want to? Her apartment is honestly kind of perfect, and she's close to all of her friends. And James.

Not that that last one will matter much after she wins this bet, but it pops into her brain nonetheless.

When she gets to the precinct, most of her co-workers haven't arrived yet. That's pretty standard, really - Lily's normally one of the earliest to get there in the mornings. Yesterday was the obvious exception, but that's because the line at Dunkin was bordering on absurd and Lily _needed _that extra dose of caffeine and sugar.

Peter's already at his desk, and when he sees that Lily's walked into the room, he practically lights up. "Good morning, Lily!" he says cheerily, opening his mouth again as if to add something else before thinking better of it.

He probably wants to ask about her date with James, but has decided to wait until more people are here.

Bet aside, _this _is why she's had her rule against dating coworkers for so long. She doesn't need her workplace - where she's supposed to be talked about for her _work_ \- to be littered with gossip about her love life.

She can only hope that no one judges her too much for this thing with James - especially Captain Dumbledore, heaven forbid, because she cares more about his opinion of her than she cares to admit.

Drunk Lily was definitely a bit of an idiot to have made this bet in the first place (for a number of reasons), but it's too late to back out of anything now.

The remainder of her coworkers gradually trickle in, and Lily makes a pointed effort to not make eye contact with any of them. She knows it's an avoidance tactic that's destined for failure, but it doesn't stop her from trying anyways.

The only arrival she does look up for is James, and she's actually a bit surprised by the small herd of butterflies that take up residence in her stomach when she makes eye contact with him.

It's ridiculous, really - she doesn't suddenly have real feelings for a guy she's previously only been marginally attracted to all because of one date. That's not how things are supposed to work.

"Morning, Evans," he says, grinning at her as he takes his seat.

"Good morning, Potter," she replies, although what she'd expected to come out in a purely professional tone sounds decidedly warmer.

There's a distinct sound of office chair wheels speeding across the tile floor, but even that isn't enough warning when Sirius comes careening into her desk.

"So, Prongs and my dearest Lily," Sirius says, splaying his hands out dramatically so that one hand rests on James' desk and one hand rests on Lily's, "which one of you is going to give me all the juicy details about your night last night?"

"Neither of us," James responds immediately, which is yet another surprise to Lily. She would've thought, given his show-offy tendencies, that he would immediately want to brag about how well their date went.

Unless… he doesn't think it went as well as she did?

Which should, theoretically, feel like a win, because it would mean she's actually in a better place in this bet than she thought, but she feels a knot of worry form in her stomach nonetheless.

The silence from both of them seems to only egg Sirius on further. "Based on the lack of reply," he reasons, "things either went really well or really terrible. And given that you're both still talking to each other, I'm inclined to go with the former, but then again, maybe it's all a front? I'm going to need some official confirmation either way."

"Pads, give the poor folks a break," Remus calls out from his desk.

Sirius spins to face him, frowning. "Don't be a buzzkill, Moony. Don't you want to know how their date went?"

"Obviously," Remus replies. "But you're not going to get information out of them like that - are you forgetting absolutely _everything _you know about interrogation tactics?"

"So what you're saying is we need to lock them in a room somewhere until they answer me?"

"I've got an extra set of handcuffs!" Peter chimes in.

At that, Lily turns to glare at him. "Pettigrew, if you even _think _about handcuffing me, so help me god I will cut your hands _off_."

Peter mimes surrender at that, clearly not wanting to test Lily's ire any further.

"Come on, just tell us how it went and we'll all leave you alone," Marlene says, joining in on the conversation and making Lily feel very, very surrounded.

"Did you at least kiss?" Sirius tacks on.

Lily feels a telltale heat creep up her cheeks at that - because _oh_, did they kiss - and she knows it's all over at that.

"You _did_!" Sirius exclaims triumphantly. And then he seems to realise something, because he looks across the pit to someone totally different. "Shacklebolt! You hear that? Evans and Prongs kissed, and _they're _still stakeout partners."

"Padfoot…" James says warningly, probably worried that this is going to result in the two of them getting split up.

But Kingsley doesn't react that way at all. "They did?" he asks with a clear tone of excitement, before clearing his throat and sounding much more serious. "They did. Well, given that they have no past record of doing it _on _the job, I see no problem with them continuing to be partners. You and Lupin's record, on the other hand, isn't quite as clean."

"Aw, c'mon," Sirius whines, before being noticeably elbowed in the side by Remus.

"Let's not _interfere_ in this," the other man says softly, with a look in his eyes suggesting there's a deeper meaning behind his words. "Besides, I've already done my late-night shift for the week anyways, and I'd quite like to keep my Friday night free."

Sirius pouts a little at that, but shuts up anyways.

"What on earth are all of you piddling about for?" their captain's voice rings out over the precinct. "Stop crowding Potter and Evans' desks and get back to your own work."

"But Captain," Peter interjects, "we're just trying to find out more about - "

"As thrilling as these two's personal lives may be to the rest of you, I can assure you that neither of them want to talk about it right now," Dumbledore replies, and Lily feels a rush of relief.

Dumbledore seemingly knows about her and James - it'd be hard not to, given how loud Sirius has been about it for the past ten minutes - and doesn't seem to care much.

Deep down, Lily kind of knew that would be the case; Dumbledore's a pretty objective captain, and is much more likely to judge a person based on the quality of their police work than on anything that might be going on outside of work hours, but she'd fretted about it nonetheless.

Despite his eccentricities and the fact that he's often damn near impossible to read, he's definitely one of Lily's role models. He's done a pretty incredible job running the precinct - even _with _Sirius, Remus, Peter, and James constantly getting up to stupid shit - and earning and maintaining his respect is one of the most important things in the world to her.

And as is often to happen when she cares a lot about something, she thinks way too far into it and worries about it at entirely unnecessary levels.

But Dumbledore's word in the precinct is law, so the four people clustered around her desk gradually roll their chairs back to their workspaces - although not without some audible grumbling about 'no fun.'

Almost as soon as that chaos in the precinct calms down, and everyone's gotten back to work at their own desks, a new form of chaos enters the office, in the form of an elevator ding and a tiny, stout woman wearing a pink headband with her captain's uniform.

Dolores Umbridge is the Deputy Chief of the NYPD and, in Lily's opinion, an absolute living nightmare.

And that take says a _lot _about Umbridge's character, because Lily has a natural deference to authority figures, so it takes quite a bit of horrific behavior for her to outwardly dislike someone who's got so much power over her.

Umbridge starts making a beeline for Captain Dumbledore's office.

"Do you have an appointment?" Marlene asks, but the question falls on deaf ears. Umbridge just opens the door to Dumbledore's office entirely without preamble, and closes it behind her before anyone can even see the captain's reaction, much less eavesdrop on the conversation.

It doesn't stop anyone from talking about it though.

"What do you think she wants?" James asks aloud.

"Probably trying to figure out another way to ruin our lives," Mary chimes in, sounding even more annoyed than usual.

"Or she's come up with yet another ridiculous PR stunt that our precinct just _has _to be the ones to run," Remus adds.

For some reason, any time the NYPD's PR department has come up with a promotional campaign involving 'real life cops,' Umbridge has come directly to the 73rd Precinct in pursuit of 'volunteers.'

It's an absurd concept, and any cop that participates is basically subjecting themselves to public ridicule - which is probably why Umbridge is so intent on making Dumbledore's precinct get involved.

They've got some sort of historical epic rivalry that goes all the way back to their training days.

But using stupid PR campaigns is _never _actually going to do anything helpful for the NYPD's reputation, in Lily's opinion, especially when leadership continues to ignore valid accusations of police brutality and pardon officers who have essentially committed homicide on the job.

No amount of posters with smiling officers and anecdotes about their dog is going to address the systematic failure of the organization to hold their employees responsible for their abuse of power.

"I refuse to participate again," James says stubbornly. "Someone graffiti'd a mustache onto my cat."

"Didn't they also draw a dick on your forehead?" Lily asks.

"Yeah, but I don't care about that," he replies. "But when you disrespect Godric, you've gone too far."

She giggles at that, because it's honestly kind of hilarious that he's more defensive of his _cat's _honor than his own.

"Regardless, these stupid PR campaigns always suck," Sirius says, putting his feet up on his desk. "And someone needs to tell Umbridge that before we get made fools of again."

"I think that's kind of the point though, Padfoot," Remus comments. "Although someone _could _do with telling the PR department that _pitches _these sorts of ideas that their ideas suck and nothing's going to change with public opinion until the department as a whole takes responsibility for their actions."

"Oh but _why _would we ever want to do that?" Marlene answers sarcastically. "That requires actual work,and it's just _so _much easier to stick a picture of me and my wife's dog in a subway station. Admittedly, I looked _great _in that picture, but my natural beauty is going to do fuck-all to fix their reputation."

"You guys know Umbridge can probably hear you, right?" Kingsley interrupts. "Captain Dumbledore's office isn't _that _soundproof."

"Good, I want her to hear how much she sucks," Mary answers.

Lily privately agrees, even though she hasn't actually participated in this conversation much.

It's weirdly perfect timing though, because Umbridge picks that exact moment to walk out of Dumbledore's office, a smug, self-satisfied grin on her toadlike features.

When Dumbledore walks out of his office, he looks decidedly uncomfortable - Lily can't help but wonder exactly what went down in that conversation that has him looking like that, because he's usually relatively unshaken by most anything.

"Umbridge has informed me that a few precincts will likely be undergoing remodeling efforts over the next few months, and our precinct is going to house their employees while the construction is underway," he announces to the room. "Meaning that we'll likely have to consolidate space to accommodate them and their desks."

"Enjoy the lack of personal space," Umbridge adds with a tone of artificial sweetness, before the elevator dings and she steps inside.

When the doors close, the precinct goes up in a storm of commentary - and Lily absolutely doesn't hold back this time.

"Why is she _always _like this?"

"I can't believe the nerve of that woman."

"It's absurd that she just gets to walk all over us out of personal vengeance."

"At least no one's drawing a mustache on my cat this time."

That last comment from James draws Lily out of her righteous anger, and she looks over at him.

He shrugs. "Hey, I'm just looking at the positives here."

"I'm suprised you're not more annoyed about this," she says. "You're not going to be able to just roll your chair around the pit anymore."

"Eh, I can still do it - I'll just hit more things. It's like a giant real-life game of pinball," he replies. "I'm surprised _you're _so annoyed by it - you're not even going to be here when this happens."

Shit - she'd almost forgotten about that. "It's the principle of the thing," she insists anyways. "It's ridiculous that she can abuse her power and wield it against people she harbors a personal vendetta against."

"Oh yeah no, that part's definitely absurd," James agrees.

The one bright side of Umbridge's unannounced arrival and announcement is that it gets pretty much everyone in the precinct to stop obsessing over James and Lily's date - it doesn't even dominate the conversation when Lily and Marlene walk up the street to grab lunch, when questions about her personal life are much more appropriate.

"I honestly can't decide who pisses me off more - Umbridge or Snape," Marlene says while they're waiting in line.

The Deputy Chief who likes making their lives a nightmare or the Major Crimes detective who insists on stealing their thunder whenever he can - it's a pretty tough decision, honestly.

"My vote's definitely on Snape," Lily replies. "At least Umbridge doesn't hit on me when she's trying to ruin my life."

"Oh god, I almost forgot about his thing for you," Marlene says, shuddering.

"You'd think he'd take a hint, but apparently not," Lily replies, thinking back to the numerous times Snape had blatantly made his fascination with her known.

It's awfully funny to her, in a twisted sort of way, that he somehow thinks she'd still be interested in him when he regularly tries to stab both her and the rest of her colleagues in the back.

"Well, maybe now that you're dating James, he'll leave you alone."

"I somehow doubt that would stop him," Lily reasons. "If anything, it'll probably just spurn him on. Not to mention, James and I aren't dating - or at least, we won't be for much longer."

"But you _did _kiss him," Marlene replies.

"I did." She pauses her conversation with Marlene to place her order, before jumping right back in where she'd left off. "Doesn't change the fact that I'm still going to win this bet."

"As both a neutral spectator to this bet and a person who is literally always right about these sorts of things, I can say with a lot of confidence that you are definitely not going to win this bet. James' heart eyes are even bigger this morning than they were yesterday."

Lily waves that off. "First dates are like that. We've still got nine days for things to go downhill."

That's the thing she's been repeating to herself all day, anyways. Nine days for James to realise she's not the one for him and for the stupid butterflies she gets whenever he looks at her to just die already.

Marlene rolls her eyes, clearly still convinced that she's right, but doesn't push the point any further. Instead, she starts off on a story about this past weekend, when she swears she and Dorcas saw Justin Timberlake in Soho.

* * *

Lily gets to go home early today - one of the side effects of doing a stakeout in the evening is that she's granted a half day in return.

She probably could benefit from taking a nap while she's home - she's going to be horrifically tired tomorrow morning if she doesn't - but she's also got a weird thing against midday naps and as a result, ends up showering, cleaning her apartment a bit, and reading a book instead.

On her way back to the police station, she grabs a pack of Red Bulls from a corner store and just accepts that she'll need half of them to get through tonight, and the other half to get through tomorrow.

Of course, when she gets there and walks around back to where the unmarked car they're taking to the stakeout tonight is parked, James is somehow there even earlier than she is.

"Do you know how unhealthy those are for you, Evans?" he asks with a smirk when she opens the car door. "And to think, you say _my _eating habits are bad."

She slides into the passenger seat and pops open one of the cans. "There's a difference between a couple energy drinks and putting Cheetos on a Cosmic Brownie."

"That was a _dare_," he insists. "I love both of those things individually, but I would _never _combine them of my own volition."

"You still ate it, that counts for something."

"Look me in the eyes and tell me you wouldn't eat that on a dare," he says, turning to face her. "If your honor was on the line, tell me you wouldn't eat some absurd food combination just to prove a point."

Given the absurd lengths she _is _currently going to in order to prove a point - though there's no food involved in this one - he's definitely one-hundred percent right in that assessment. "My honor isn't dependent on absurd food combinations."

"Right," James laughs, turning the car on. "I forget that you and your honor are above the rest of us mere mortals."

"Not above mortals," Lily corrects, "just above you, Sirius, Remus, and Peter."

James pauses in his attempt to back out of the police lot and puts a hand to his heart in mock offense. "So we're not even mortals anymore? What are we, some sort of goblin underling?"

"I mean, it would explain a lot," Lily teases. "You all sort of _do _resemble goblins, in a way."

James doesn't even look away from the road. "Are you calling me ugly, Evans? Because if so, I feel very personally attacked."

"So let me clarify, you're not offended when someone draws a dick on your forehead, but you _are _offended when someone insinuates that you look like a goblin?"

"Um, yes?" James replies. "How is telling someone they look like a goblin supposed to be the _less_ offensive alternative to drawing a dick on a shitty NYPD PR photo of them?"

"Fair enough," Lily concedes. And then, because she feels like it's necessary to clarify, just in case he _was _actually offended, she adds, "You don't actually look like a goblin, by the way."

"That's probably the closest I'll get to a compliment from you, so I'll take it."

"Oh, shut it," she says, resisting the urge to jokingly shove him, because he's driving a car and that's not safe for anyone. "If I actually compliment you, it'll go straight to your already over inflated ego."

"If it's already over inflated, one extra compliment surely can't hurt _that _much?"

"Okay, now _you're _the one with the terrible logic," she argues. "That's like saying 'oh, if I continue to blow up an already over inflated balloon, there's nothing else bad that can happen, it definitely won't explode and hit me in the fucking face.' "

"Good point, Evans," he says. "We wouldn't want my ego to explode - that would get impossibly messy."

He cranes his head to parallel park the car across the street from the building they're meant to be watching, and the way he suddenly moves closer to her sends a waft of his cologne - or laundry detergent, or body wash, or _something_ of his that smells impossibly tempting - towards her.

The suddenness of it immediately transports her back to last night, and the moments where she'd had him even closer - particularly, that kiss at the end of the night - and it takes more self control than it should to resist grabbing him by the collar and reprising the whole ordeal.

But they're here on business, and they're _not _Sirius and Remus and therefore _aren't _going to make out in a cop car while they're meant to be watching a potential crime scene, so Lily restrains that particular impulse.

James gets the car parked with relative ease; Lily's actually impressed at that, because she's still absolutely awful at parallel parking.

"What does an exploded ego even look like, anyways?"

He snorts. "Ask Snape?"

"Hmm, I wouldn't quite call Snape's that," Lily comments. "I think it's the opposite - why else would he overcompensate so much?"

"Why else would he overcompensate so much: title of Snape's sex tape," James replies immediately.

Lily can't suppress her giggle at that. 'Title of your sex tape' jokes are James' own version of those 'that's what she said' type lines, and while Lily probably shouldn't find that type of crude humor all that funny, she does nonetheless.

"Eugh, if Snape has a sex tape, I really hope I never, ever have to know about its existence."

"Likewise," James agrees.

They settle into easy conversation - it's not entirely unlike last night, except instead of sitting at a table for two in a Thai restaurant, they're in a parked car outside of a warehouse.

There should be all sorts of bells going off in Lily's head about how this isn't going even remotely sour, and that she needs to be trying harder to make him dislike her, but the ringing of those alarms is somehow entirely offset by the fact that she's just genuinely enjoying his presence.

"Tell me something I probably don't know about you," he says suddenly.

"What?"

"I feel like I've talked about myself a _lot _recently. I mean, you basically got my whole high school detention record last night; now it's your turn."

"Well, and I'm sure you won't find this surprising at all," she tells him, "I didn't get detention once in high school."

James laughs. "Somehow, I entirely expected that."

"High school me never would've expected to be working in the NYPD though," she adds, figuring that she might as well tack on something at least somewhat more surprising. "I actually wanted to be a chemist for a while; my chemistry teacher in high school adored me, and really wanted me to go the whole PhD route."

"Why'd you change your mind?"

"I realised just how expensive it'd be to be in school for that long," she replies. "And my mom got really sick my senior year of high school, and all my college savings went towards that instead."

It's not usually a story she finds herself telling very much, but she's weirdly okay with divulging this information to him.

"So I went to community college just long enough to get my associate's degree, and joined the NYPD from there - it seemed like the most impactful career I could have without needing to put myself in an extreme amount of debt."

James is looking at her, but not in the pitying way she might've expected from him. She knows that he comes from money, and that can sometimes color how people react to her story.

People who grew up comfortable often don't understand that there's a world in which both of those things - a college education and life-saving healthcare - aren't just assumed. When you're wealthy, you don't know what it's like to choose between your child's education and your wife's health - but it's the choice Lily's father had to make, and while _she_ knows he made the right one, she still sees the regret in his eyes every once in a while when it's brought up that Lily didn't get a four-year degree. And James could never know what any of that's like.

But he doesn't actually say any of the things she'd presumed he might say. He takes her reality at face value, and doesn't question it.

"And now look at you," he says instead, with a wry sort of grin on his face, "destined to run the NYPD someday."

"I don't know about that…" Lily replies modestly, even though she _would _love nothing more than to reach that top office one day.

"I do," James responds. "You'd make a brilliant commissioner."

She almost wants to kiss him for that alone.

"Well, thank you," she says. "I suppose it's proof that sometimes things that feel like the end of the fucking world at the time sometimes work out in your favor."

"I can toast to that, Evans," he says, picking up his Coke bottle from the cupholder and clinking it against her Red Bull.

As soon as he puts his drink back down, she switches course. "So, tell me something _I _probably don't know."

"Hmm," he replies thoughtfully. "Well, despite you ribbing me about my food choices, I'm actually a pretty good cook - especially when it comes to Indian food."

That's actually relatively unexpected. "Oh really?"

"Yes really," he insists. "Better than most of the Indian places around here, if I do say so myself - my mum taught me a number of her recipes over the years."

She hums. "You'll have to show me sometime."

"Tomorrow?" he replies immediately, before fumbling his words a little bit. "I mean, yeah - I could just, if you wanted to come over to my place after work tomorrow, I could cook you dinner?"

She's a little taken aback by how quickly he'd offered, but she's honestly all too happy to spend more time with him - she's breaking all of her typical rules by spending _this _much time with a guy right when they've just started dating, but she just… really enjoys his presence.

Oh yeah, and the bet thing too. Seeing more of him is good for the bet thing too.

"Yeah, I'd like that," she says.

He grins at that. "I'm glad you're not sick of me yet - _fuck, _we've got movement."

Lily follows James' eyes to see that, sure enough, there's a van that's just pulled up outside the warehouse. Both the driver and passenger side doors open simultaneously, revealing a short man in a suit and a woman with wildly curly hair dressed in leggings and an oversized sweatshirt.

Lily immediately reaches to the gun sitting against her hip, checking that it's still there.

When the pair go into the building, that's her and James' cue to get out of the car. They do their best to do so casually - who knows if there's still a third person (or more) in the van, and they'd very much _not _like to blow their cover immediately.

It's a bit hard to entirely miss the bulletproof vests and guns on both of their hips once they get closer, but a few seconds of anonymity could very well be their saving grace.

They cross the street in relative silence - the only words they exchange are to confirm that Lily's going after the guy in the suit and James is in charge of catching the woman. Lily also takes a peek into the van when she gets close enough to see inside the windows, and at first glance, there doesn't appear to be anyone laying in wait.

The two people emerge from the building just a few moments later, the man holding a briefcase in one hand that he definitely didn't have when he walked in.

"NYPD, _freeze_!" Lily yells, pulling her gun out of its holster.

But because these things are never that easy, neither one of them actually freezes. Lily and James each go for their respective targets; the man, who's also got that briefcase of his to attend to, is noticeably slower, which very quickly results in Lily getting him on the ground.

It's not entirely unlike the maneuver she's used to get James down yesterday.

She immediately gets the man in handcuffs, and grabs the briefcase as well. Her heart is pounding in her ears as she goes through his Miranda rights - it always is, in these sorts of situations - and it's waking her up more than any Red Bull ever could.

That attuned sense of hearing means that she very distinctly hears the sound of breaking glass inside the warehouse, and immediately starts to wonder what the hell that could mean.

About a minute later, James reappears, out of breath and alone. "She had a getaway car waiting out back," he informs Lily.

"The dirty bitch didn't even tell _me _about that," the man in handcuffs mutters angrily. "Second in command and I don't even get to know the escape plans."

Lily's actually a bit taken aback by the revelation that he's _not _the one in charge. It's probably the massive difference in the way the two of them were dressed (and maybe something with her socialized biases causing her to automatically assume the man was in charge), but she really wouldn't have pinned the woman in the oversized hoodie as the one running this whole operation.

Of course, Lily still has no idea what this whole operation actually _is_ anyways.

But that's what the person they've just arrested is for, hopefully. It remains to be seen if they'll be able to get him to talk.

"What's in the case?" James asks, grabbing onto the briefcase and following Lily's lead as she starts to bring their suspect back to the car.

"I'm not telling you that," he responds.

So it seems he's one of the stubborn ones. "We'll just be able to unlock it when we get back to the station, you know," Lily says.

The man still remains silent on the subject.

"What's your name?" James tries again.

"I'm not telling you that either," he reiterates stubbornly. "The pretty one told me I don't have to say anything without an attorney present."

"Huh, I don't remember saying that," James muses, looking over at Lily with a glint in his eye.

She can't help but quirk a smile at that, even if they _are _on the job right now. "Would you look at that, your ego exploded even _without _my assistance," she comments mildly, as she guides their suspect into the backseat of the car.

"It was a ticking timebomb, I guess," he replies, getting into the driver's seat and putting the briefcase over on Lily's side.

Backup arrives on the scene almost as soon as they're both in the car, and they take over searching the van. There's some pretty intense surveillance equipment and a number of illegal weapons - the second part is a godsend, in a weird sort of way, because it means they've got at least one charge on him and don't have to end up racing against the clock to investigate the contents of the case or interrogate him. They can push both of those things off until tomorrow morning and actually get some proper sleep tonight.

The ride back to the precinct is a bit quieter and less playful than the one on the way over - there's only so much teasing you can pull off when you've got a suspected criminal and apparent second-in-command to some sort of unknown crime operation seated behind you.

When they get back to the station, James takes on the task of bringing their suspect up to one of the holding cells, and Lily takes the case down the the evidence lockers. They'll deal with both of these things in the morning, but for now, it's well past midnight and they've successfully caught at least one part of the pair that's likely responsible for all those bodega robberies and god knows what else.

That's quite enough work for one day.

She runs into James again while she's waiting on the ground floor for a Lyft to show up; she may live walking distance from the precinct, but making that trek in the daylight is massively different from making that same trek at nearly one in the morning, and a car ride home feels like the much safer option here.

"Good work tonight, Evans," he says, walking up next to her.

"You as well."

He runs one of his hands through his hair, before asking, "So… do you actually want to come to my place for dinner tomorrow?"

"I said yes, didn't I?" she replies, nudging him with her shoulder.

"Well, yeah but I didn't know if - I don't know, maybe you'd changed your mind?"

She looks over at him, a bit taken aback to discover that he actually looks serious about it. And she's confused by it - why would _she _be the one to change her mind in this situation?

_He's _the one that's meant to eventually get sick of her, anyways.

"I haven't changed my mind," she reassures him.

His expression melts into something akin to relief. "Oh. Good, I'm looking forward to it then."

"Me too."

She realises that they've somehow moved to face each other over the course of this exchange, and for the second time tonight, she's all-too-tempted to go for a revival of last night.

She almost goes for it this time too, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet as if to pop up on her tiptoes to kiss him - because he's so close and somehow still smells so good despite literally chasing down a criminal earlier tonight - but she's stopped at the last minute by the lights that come streaming into the front windows of the station.

"Shit, uh, fuck, that's my ride," she says, immediately doing her best to collect herself. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? Both, uh, at work in the morning and at your place tomorrow night."

Now it's her turn to sound like a nervous wreck, apparently.

But instead of calling her out on her sudden awkwardness, he just smiles at her. "See you tomorrow, Evans."

She spends the entire ride home trying to tell her brain to _get it together, for fuck's sake_. She's supposed to be showing him why they're incompatible, not fucking collapsing into a puddle every time he looks at her with that silly glint in his eyes.

She'll get her shit together tomorrow.

Maybe.


	4. Messy

_DAY THREE_

* * *

"You forgot something important yesterday," Lily says to James, the moment he steps into the observation room.

He looks properly confused at that. "What did I forget?"

"You lost a bet, and you still owe me a public announcement of superiority."

"Oh, right - that," he replies, sounding like he was expecting a totally different response. "Yeah, you're right, I did forget about that. Don't worry though - I'll be sure to make it up to you when I proclaim to the entire office that you're a literal goddess who is better than me in every single way imaginable, especially in laser tag."

She doesn't have a good explanation for why the room suddenly feels a few degrees warmer when he calls her a 'literal goddess.'

"What were you expecting me to say?" She can't resist asking.

His hand flies up to run through his hair. "I dunno - you said it as soon as I walked into the room, and we're literally looking at the dude we arrested last night, so my first thought was that it was something case-related, and I was _positive _I did all that shit correctly."

The insistence with which he says that last part is almost alarming - though it really shouldn't be. James is a bit careless on the organizational front, but he's remarkably conscientious when it comes to checking off all the little details that have to be handled for each case.

The fact that he can just somehow keep perfect track of all of it in his head, instead of keeping a printed list for it like Lily does (as well as most of the other officers - she's actually _not _the odd one out on this one), is both mildly infuriating and slightly impressive.

"Oh no, it definitely wasn't that," she answers, dismissing that concern.

"Good," he says. "Evidence managed to unlock the confiscated case, by the way. Filled with cash, as well as a couple bags of Living Death."

Lily's surprised at that - she wasn't aware this was a drug-related situation. But Living Death is the street name for this awful concoction of drugs that, by all means, should never be mixed together. She's got no idea what the appeal is, given how many people have died by taking just a little too much of it.

"You think this is connected to that case as well?" Lily asks.

"Possibly - at the very least, he probably knows of a supplier and a couple dealers. I get the feeling they're more of the middlemen type - the both of them, that is. They had to have gotten it from someone, but I wouldn't pin a run-of-the-mill drug dealer as the type to have two separate escape plans from a simple pick-up."

He's obviously been thinking about this a good bit - he's holding a half-empty coffee mug and there's darker circles around his eyes than there were last night, suggesting he slept less than she did.

To her knowledge, James isn't usually the type to bring his work home with him unless absolutely necessary, so the fact that he's already spent so much time working through the pieces of this case is kind of surprising. She wonders what kept him up.

For the briefest of moments, she hopes it was about her. Mainly because _she _spent a decent part of last night thinking about whether or not she'll have the chance to kiss him again like she did on Wednesday.

And yeah, she's got to get him to lose interest in a week's time, but surely she can still find time for one more heated kiss in there before things start to go south?

Fuck, this _really _isn't the thing she needs at the forefront of her mind while going in to investigate a man convicted of unlawful possession of firearms and suspected to be involved with an extensive crime ring.

She suddenly realises that James is watching her, the tiniest hint of mischief in his hazel eyes. "Now, do we want to go in and do this interrogation, or…?"

She nods once, doing her best to clear her head of all those previous thoughts. This case takes priority. "Yes, let's go."

They've done enough interrogations together to know how these things work, and to know how to best play off of each other. Lily, on appearances alone, looks like the much less threatening one - she's good at getting people's guards down. James, on the other hand, comes off as mildly intimidating at first, although that impression is usually blown the moment he makes some dumb joke under his breath.

It puts the suspect - or in this case, the convicted criminal who definitely has intel - into a sense of lulled predictability; they're woefully unprepared when Lily switches it up and turns unexpectedly ruthless.

As a pair, they've got a remarkable success rate.

Lily opens the door into the interrogation room, and James follows her in. The man from last night - who has since identified himself as Bartemius Crouch, Jr., looks up and glares at them.

"My father's on the City Council, you know," he says ruefully. "He'll have this precinct's head for arresting me."

Now that Lily thinks about it, _that's _why the name sounded so familiar. There is in fact a Barty Crouch on the City Council.

She's hardly worried about this man's threats, though. She'd much rather see justice served than worry about catering to some rich dude's threats; not to mention that one city councillor hardly has enough power to punish an entire precinct for arresting his son on very legitimate reasons.

"We don't want to make this difficult, Mr. Crouch," she replies soothingly, intentionally playing the role as the gentle interrogator.

She slides into the seat across from their suspect, and James remains standing. He's always the sort of person with endless amounts of nervous energy, especially when they're doing police work, so forcing him to stay still and seated is a mission destined for failure.

Having him pace behind her is massively preferable to watching him drum his fingers on the table nonstop if he's forced to occupy the chair next to her. She switched to 'ruthless cop' far faster than normal the one time that happened.

"You arrested me," Crouch snaps back. "So clearly you _are _trying to make things difficult."

"Because you were engaged in illegal activity," James replies. "Not only did you try to run initially, but you were in possession of both a number of illegal firearms _and _a bag full of cash and extremely dangerous drugs. Arrest is, you know, typically a natural result of all of those things."

"We're going to look into the plausibility of reducing your sentence if you cooperate and answer some of our questions," Lily adds.

At that, Crouch visibly calms a little. "Reducing my sentence?"

"Yes," she nods. "You said you were second in command, right?"

Crouch makes a grunting noise in the affirmative.

"Well then, I'm sure you've got a good bit of information about the person in charge - that woman you were with last night, right?"

He falls silent.

"She betrayed you, you know," James adds, clearly going into this on a psychological angle. "She ran out the back and left you to take the fall for everything. Doesn't seem very fair to me."

"No, she was a little bitch who did me dirty," Crouch seethes, and Lily swears she sees his tongue twitch out the side of his mouth for the briefest of moments.

"Then cooperating with us really does seem like your best option here," James replies coolly.

Crouch looks like he's weighing this option - Lily might not even have to break out her more ruthless side on this interrogation, with the way James has managed to make this go.

"She's a hitwoman," he eventually declares. "We were there last night to collect payment."

"A hitwoman," Lily repeats.

"Yeah - people pay her to do their dirty work," Crouch replies. She doesn't know _why _he feels the need to define the term for her - she's a cop for fuck's sake, she obviously knows what a hitwoman is.

"And who was she collecting payment from?"

"No fucking clue," Crouch shrugs. "Guy wouldn't use his real name - went by an alias of Voldemort in all his communications with her. Overdramatic son of a bitch, he was - no need to go through some massive scheme of setting up a shit ton of hold-ups just to plant payment in the right location."

So that explains the bodega robberies.

"And he wanted her to go after…?"

"Couple by the name of Alice and Frank Longbottom. Not really sure why - Bella's never really given a fuck about _why _her clients want people dead, she's just in it for the murder and the profit."

Lily makes a note of those names - she'll need to reach out to Witness Protection today and get the two of them somewhere safe. This person - Bella, apparently - is still on the loose, and even though she may not have actually gotten her payment, there's no telling whether or not she'll try to go after them anyways.

"So Bella's your boss?" James asks, while Lily's still writing down the names.

"_Was _my boss," he corrects. "I don't work for her anymore - not when she stabbed me in the fucking back like that."

Lily's inclined to point out that he _also _doesn't work for her because he's going to jail for a whole host of things - including potential accessory to murder, if this interrogation proves fruitful - but she bites her tongue. That's not going to help the situation at hand.

She tucks a piece of hair behind her ears as she looks back up at Crouch. "Is Bella her real name, or is that an alias as well?"

"That's her real name," he answers. "Bellatrix Lestrange."

"Is she, by chance, married?" James asks abruptly, and Lily's a bit confused as to why he's suddenly veering so off-course from their typical questions.

Crouch shrugs. "More or less. Don't think she talks much to the guy, but yeah she is," he answers. "Why, thinking about making a move when you bring her in?

"Criminals aren't really my type," he replies, brushing off the man's weirdly suggestive comment with ease. "I like the people I date to _not _be going to federal prison."

Lily makes a mental note to ask him where the hell he was going with that line of questioning when they get out of here.

"Anyways, Mr. Crouch," Lily says, bringing the conversation back on track, "do you have any idea where this Bellatrix Lestrange might have been planning to move next?"

The rest of the interrogation proves rather fruitful - Crouch doesn't know _everything_ about the situation, and they've really only got the ghost of an idea of how to track down Bellatrix, but it's better than nothing. Once presented with the idea that he'd been betrayed and could potentially benefit from spilling the beans, he'd been all too willing to throw her under the bus as much as possible.

This case isn't just some little handoff that they happened to catch wind of - this is a whole expansive assassin business, accompanied by a drug trade and a benefactor who was willing to set up a ton of other criminal activity just to yield payment.

This is big.

"Well, I'd say that was another _roaring _success," James comments, as soon as they've shut the door to the interrogation room and indicated to the security officers that they're good to take Crouch back down to holding.

"Yeah, that went about as well as I could've hoped," Lily agrees, before changing pace. "Why did you ask if she was married, by the way?"

A dark look crosses James' face, one that she wasn't really expecting. "Bellatrix isn't exactly a common name. Sirius had a cousin by that name - her maiden name was Black too, and I just… I was curious if they could turn out to be one and the same."

Lily only knows bits and pieces about Sirius' early life - she knows it was a bad situation, and that he moved in with James when they were both in high school, and that he hasn't talked to most of his family since - but even with all of that, finding out that one of his cousins might be a paid assassin seems like much more than just a 'bad home life.'

"Shit," is all Lily can think of as response.

James just laughs bitterly. "The best part is, if she _is _actually his cousin and it turns out she's literally murdered people, he's _still _going to be considered the biggest family disappointment."

Lily doesn't really know how to respond to that either, because _god_, that's so fucked up. Sirius may be a bit of a mess and a goofball at times, but he's a genuinely good person down to his very soul, and Lily can't understand how he could possibly be considered a disappointment.

James changes the subject, saving Lily from trying to figure out what to say. "Anyways, I'm going to go see if we've got any previous criminal records on Lestrange - I'm assuming you're planning on reaching out to Witness Protection about the Longbottoms?"

"Yep," she answers. "Let me know if you find anything on Lestrange."

He does a dorky little mock salute. "Roger that."

Her heart shouldn't flutter at that - why the _fuck _is it fluttering at that?

Instead of pondering an answer to that, she heads off to go find Kingsley, who should be able to give her the authorization she needs to get Alice and Frank Longbottom under Witness Protection.

He can probably tell by the way she walks up to him, looking like she's on a mission, that the interrogation was a success. "Got a good bit of information from the guy you two arrested last night, I take it?" he confirms.

"More than a good bit," Lily replies. "This is a bigger case than I think any of us anticipated. Which brings me to why I'm here - I need authorization to put a couple into Witness Protection."

"For what?"

"That exchange wasn't just about a drug deal or anything like that. That exchange was payment for putting out a hit on two people."

Kingsley's eyes go wide at that - he clearly wasn't anticipating this case taking that turn either. "Right, well then, yeah, I'll authorize it. Fill out the form and get it to me and we'll get the ball rolling on this ASAP."

"Yes, sir."

"And relay to Dumbledore everything that you've just found out," he adds. "I'm sure he'll want to be apprised of the newfound intensity of this situation."

"Yes, sir," Lily repeats.

She gets back to her desk, and immediately starts filling out the electronic form for a Witness Protection request. Once it's filled out and sent to Kingsley for authorization, she gets up and heads over to Dumbledore's office.

She raps on the open door gently. "Captain? Is now a good time?"

Dumbledore swivels in his desk chair to face her, folding his hands on the desk. "Yes, now is a good time."

The completely flat nature of his voice means that she can't quite tell how he feels about her coming into his office right now. For the sake of not worrying herself into a hole, she goes with the assumption that he's fine with it.

She shuts the door behind her and takes a seat in the chair across from his desk. "Kingsley wanted me to make sure you were aware that - "

"That the arrest you and Potter made last night was much more consequential than we originally anticipated?"

Lily blinks, unsure how he already knew that's what she was here about. "Yes, sir. It seems that we've encountered a professional hitwoman. She was there last night to retrieve payment - the man we arrested was her second-in-command. It doesn't sound like he was ever directly involved, but he was certainly an accessory at least."

"Interesting," Dumbledore answers with a hum. "Well, I will leave you and Potter as the two detectives handling this case - it seems as though the two of you have a pretty good handle on things thus far, and I think it's safe to presume that your personal relationship will not interfere with your professional performance."

The way he says it so confidently makes Lily's heart swell with pride - because he clearly does trust her and her work quite a bit - but she also knows that his statement comes with a bit of a warning as well. A warning that he'll be disappointed in her if she proves him wrong.

And she most _definitely _does not want to disappoint him.

"We can definitely handle this case," she reaffirms quickly. "I don't let my personal life interfere with my work."

"I know, Evans. I trust you."

And there he goes with the 'I trust you' line - now she'll _really _have fucked things over if she somehow can't keep up her promise.

But it's absurd to think she wouldn't be able to, anyways - it's not like her and James are ever actually going to get serious, so there's no way things would get complicated or intense enough to bleed into their ability to handle a major case like this.

"Thank you, sir," she replies, looking more at the phoenix portrait above his head than at Dumbledore himself.

The giant painting in Dumbledore's office is one of those things that - when he first became captain and hung the thing - Lily thought had deep symbolic meaning. Like, a phoenix rising from the ashes being representative of his ability to rise above his upbringing and do great things.

But no. Turns out, he just likes this particular phoenix painting. And the phoenix is fucking named _Cheddar_, of all things. 'His plumage reminds me of a really excellent Vermont cheddar' had been Dumbledore's explanation for it, on the one occasion Sirius had plucked up the nerve to ask about it.

Instead of dwelling on the painting for too much longer, she turns on her heel and walks out of Dumbledore's office. She's got plenty of work ahead of her today.

And she ends up head-down for the majority of the day, researching anything she can find related to Lestrange, Crouch, or even Voldemort - there's not much information beyond basic records, but that's enough to start building a really detailed case file.

But naturally, her day doesn't come without a few disturbances. The first one is the acceptable sort of disruption - James making good on his side of their deal.

"Attention everyone," he says loudly, once everyone's back from lunch. "I just need all of you to know that Lily Evans is the greatest person to ever walk this earth and massively superior to me in every way, shape, and form - especially when it pertains to laser tag."

Then he looks at her and grins. "That good enough, Evans?"

She shrugs, barely concealing a smile. "It'll do."

The second disturbance to her productivity is a much less pleasant one. It comes about an hour before her day is set to come to a close, in the form of an officer walking out of the elevator. As soon as she recognises the greasy black hair and hooked nose, she immediately averts her eyes, but it's a moment too late.

"Hello, Lily," he says as he approaches her desk, and _honestly_, even the way he says her name sets her on edge.

"Snape," she responds plainly, not even looking up from her work to acknowledge him.

"Got anything interesting there?" She can feel him craning his head to look at her computer monitor, and she's massively grateful that she doesn't currently have any sensitive information up on the screen.

"Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary," she lies, because telling the truth would almost certainly mean losing this case.

Snape hails from the Major Crimes unit, and Lily swears his main motivation in life is the satisfaction of taking a promising case from the regular detectives just before they've cracked it and taking all the credit for himself. And as a result, Sirius, Remus, James, and Peter started calling him the 'Vulture' a few years back.

Lily hasn't pointed out that this actually kind of makes Snape sound like he's part of their weird little nickname squad, purely because _she _likes being able to think of him as a vulture. She may not indulge the boys in any of _their _strange animal-themed nicknames, but Snape's is just too perfect to pass up.

"Well if you get anything good, I'll be around," he says, and Lily has to resist the urge to roll her eyes.

As if she'd actively seek him out to solve a case that she's damn well capable of handling herself.

"I'm just here dropping off some of the leftover files from that case I took off of Potter's hands last week," he adds, acting as if Lily actually cares why he's here. "Double homicide - a little above his pay grade, I think."

He says that second part louder, and she knows that he's trying to make sure James hears him say it, in the hopes of getting a rise out of him.

Predictably, it works. "You and I both know I'd all but tracked down the apartment number of the perps before you took that one from me," James growls.

"But who was the one to track down that apartment number and actually _make _the arrest?" Snape taunts, a wicked grin spreading across his features, making him look particularly vulture-like. "Oh, yeah. That was me."

James looks like he's about ready to fight at this point, and a brawl is definitely not what any of them need at this point. "James, it's not worth it," Lily warns gently. Then she turns back to Snape, her voice firmer. "Go drop your fucking files off."

That, at the very least, throws Snape off a little, and the predatory grin on his face slips a little as he looks between the two of them. "Fair enough," he eventually answers. "I've got to get back to Major Crimes soon anyways - we've got _much _more important work to do than anything that's getting done here."

He walks away from their desks, and all Lily can think is _good riddance._

"You called me James."

Lily turns to look at her deskmate, who's looking at her curiously.

It takes her a moment to figure out what he's referring to. "I guess I did," she replies simply.

He smirks at her, in that cheeky little way that makes the dimple on his right cheek stand out. "I like it. You should do that more often."

"You'll just have to earn it from me somehow," she answers airily, before looking back at her computer.

The taunt just falls off her tongue so effortlessly that it takes her a few moments to realise that she was most definitely blatantly flirting with him without even thinking about it.

"I'll see what I can do."

* * *

_I'll grab a bottle of wine on my way over - you need me to pick up anything else?_

**_nah, i should have everything here_**

**_and i was going to say you didn't need to bring wine, but_**

**_all i've got here is gin and cheap beer, and that's not going to mix well with this_**

**_so yes, wine_**

_Sounds like a plan. :)_

**_i'm in 308 by the way_**

**_you can just find my name on the callbox and i'll let you in_**

_Will do._

_See you soon!_

Lily double checks all the information on her phone as she walks up to James' apartment building, holding a bottle of red wine. She doesn't quite know why, but she's oddly nervous right now.

It's silly, feeling this way, because the stakes literally could not be lower - she's _trying _to make him lose interest, for fuck's sake, but she's awkwardly bouncing on the balls of her feet as she looks for his name on the callbox anyways.

She finds his name, jams the button, and waits as it rings.

"Evans?" James' voice crackles through the box.

"The one and only."

He doesn't answer that; instead, the door just buzzes to let her in. She climbs the three sets of stairs required to get up to his unit, walking down the hall until she finds 308.

She knocks on the door, and it's answered by a shout of, "It's open!"

When she opens the door, she can't actually see James yet - he's presumably in the kitchen, where the light is coming from, and she takes stock of his place as she walks in that direction.

Much to her surprise, the whole place isn't a disaster. Unlike his completely chaotic desk, his apartment - or at least, what she can see of it - is actually relatively neat. It's a bit disappointing, bet-wise, because she figured she could probably get on his nerves pretty quickly with her neat freak tendencies, but there's not all that much she could pick apart here.

She walks into the kitchen area, and is greeted by the sight of James moving about the kitchen with a sort of practiced fluidity.

"I would've come and opened the door myself," he says, not even looking up from what he's working on, "but I was - yeah." He lifts his hand out of the bowl, demonstrating that he's largely incapacitated by all the spices stuck to his fingers.

"You're really outdoing yourself," she comments mildly. "This is quite a set-up you've got here."

"I take this stuff seriously, I told you that," he replies, finally lifting his head to grin at her. "Give me like ten minutes - I should be able to put most of this in the oven by then and I'll be a better host at that point."

He laughs. "I should've fucking accounted for the fact that you're always ten minutes early when I calculated when to start cooking."

She hums at that - he says it in a joking way, but who knows, maybe he's actually annoyed at that? That would be a good thing for her, really. "I brought the wine," she says. "I had to guess on what would go well with Indian food, but this should be good enough."

"I'm hardly a wine snob, Evans," he laughs. "I'm very easy to please. As long as it's not moscato, I'm happy."

She wrinkles her nose at the mere suggestion. "Eugh, no. It's a syrah - Google said that would pair well enough."

"Works for me," he answers, grabbing a spoon and mixing the sauce he's got on the stove. "I can pour us both a glass once I'm done with this. Or, if you'd rather do it yourself instead of waiting, there are wineglasses in the first cabinet on your right and a corkscrew in the bottom left drawer."

Lily takes the second option, following his directions and successfully finding both of those things. The insides of his cabinets are, admittedly, much more chaotic than the exterior of his apartment, but the fact that he knew exactly where to find everything despite that is kind of impressive.

She's starting to realise that James' entire organizational system is internal - he knows exactly where everything is because he can just somehow store all of that knowledge in his fucking brain instead of using color-coded tabs.

She opens the bottle, pouring them both a healthy dose of wine, before picking up one of the glasses. She sips it slowly, watching James work. He's clearly done this many times before - he's moving through all the steps of this recipe with a kind of ease - and it's very, _very _attractive, if she's being honest with herself.

Not for the first time, she realises that being alone with him in his apartment comes with the very real possibility of round two of Wednesday night - if not farther - and the thought fills her with nervous anticipation.

Sex wasn't part of the deal - 'unless you want to, I guess' were Mary's exact words - but Lily finds that yes, she actually _does _want to, if the circumstances for it arise.

And dammit, she's going to do her best to make those circumstances arise.

James puts a large ceramic pot into the oven, quickly washes and dries his hands, and then grabs the glass of wine she's had set out for him.

"Alright, now that that's handled," he says, holding his glass in her direction, "cheers."

"Cheers," she echoes, clinking her glass against his.

They stand there for a second, and then James suddenly gets his bearings or something, because he practically jumps. "Oh! I - uh, have a couch and whatnot. We don't have to just stand here for the full twenty-five minutes that needs to cook for."

Lily can't help but laugh at his awkwardness. "Yeah, let's go to the couch and whatnot."

He quickly turns on a timer, and they head out to his living area. She sits down on the left side of the couch, fully expecting James to sit right next to her, but instead, he gives her space. And she supposes that respectfulness is nice, but she'd had a few ideas of how they could spend twenty-five minutes, and none of them will work if he's a full arm's length away from her.

She pulls her right leg underneath her, mindlessly twirling the ripped threads on her jeans. As she takes another sip of her wine, she looks around his living room. It's pretty small, and practically connected to the kitchen, but he's got a massive TV and a decent collection of books, DVDs, and video games.

And then she sees something that totally throws off her previous plans. "Oh my god, _please _tell me that's Mario Kart."

James laughs. "It is."

"Can we please?"

She honestly doesn't care if wanting to play video games makes James like her more or less - she hasn't played this in _years _and she'll be _damned _if she passes up the opportunity to play when it's directly in front of her.

"Sure, but I have dibs on Peach, sorry."

She looks at him disbelievingly. "You _really _think I'd go for Peach when King Boo is an option?"

He gets up from the couch to set up the console. "Hm, so you're a King Boo type - I'll have to keep that one in mind. I'm doing an academic study on what types of people go for which Mario Kart characters."

"That sounds scientific," she says, a bit sarcastically, and James responds by flinging a controller in her direction.

Once he gets things running, they start off on a Grand Prix, and the apartment very quickly turns into an absolute cesspool of swearing. Both of them, it seems, are very vocal when they play.

The last race ends just as the timer goes off - James finishes first and Lily in third - and he immediately jumps up off the couch to get the food out of the oven.

"I'm out of practice," she yells at him, even as she gets up and collects both of their wineglasses. "Once I get the chance to play as often as you do, I guarantee I'll kick your ass."

"Whatever you say, babe," he replies, starting to arrange dishes on the table.

She decides not to comment on the 'babe' part of that (or dwell on the fact that she kind of liked it), and instead refills their drinks.

"So," she begins, once he's got everything arranged on his two-person dining table like a proper feast, "what is all of this, exactly?"

He beams at her, and it's apparent he was just _waiting _for her to ask that. "This," he says, gesturing to the largest pot, "is chicken biryani, the smaller one is malai palak, and this is naan, obviously. I meant to make a proper Indian dessert as well, but I knew I wasn't going to have time for that, so I just picked up a few different things from the bakery section of the Indian grocery store."

By the end of his speech, Lily is stuck somewhere between touched and turned-on.

Honestly, the fact that he's managed to create all of these things - and the fact that he's done all of it specifically for her - is absolutely fucking incredible.

She tells him as much, and his smile broadens. "You haven't actually tasted any of it yet, Evans," he responds. "You may very well hate all of it."

She does not, in fact, hate all of it. The exact opposite, really - James hadn't been exaggerating about his cooking skills on their stakeout; everything he's prepared is fantastic. She's been absolutely spoiled by incredible food with him twice now.

"How have you not, I don't know, quit your job at the precinct and opened a restaurant by now?" she asks, in between bites.

"Some things are more fun as hobbies," he replies, almost immediately, and it's clear he's already thought about this once or twice. "I'd probably fucking _hate _cooking if it was my full-time job - it's better this way. Plus, I actually really like being a detective - I know you think I don't take things seriously, but I actually _do _give a damn about our work."

She's a bit stunned at that last bit. "I never… I know you do."

For all that he goofs off and enjoys contributing to the regular doses of chaos at work, Lily would never argue that he's not a damn good detective. There's a reason she likes having him as her partner on cases, after all.

"You do?"

"Yes, Potter," she says, insistent about it this time. "You're a pretty amazing detective, even when you _do _pull shit like locking Lupin and Pettigrew out on the roof for three hours."

"Did you just… actually compliment me?" he asks disbelievingly. "I didn't know you were capable of that."

"I did," she answers. "I actually _do _tend to compliment people when they aren't already walking around with an ego the size of Canada."

He smirks at her. "I thought myego exploded yesterday though? How can it be both exploded _and_ the size of Canada?"

"Oh, shut up." She waves him off. "I don't have to be one-hundred percent consistent on my metaphors."

"That attitude won't win you a Pulitzer, Evans," he shoots back, grinning.

"Good thing I'm not gunning for one of those then."

They sit there, talking and teasing each other over long-cleared plates, for almost an hour. Eventually, James seems to take stock of the food still sitting in the serving dishes in front of them and stands up suddenly, gathering up their empty plates.

She gets up and follows him into the kitchen. "Hey, no. You cooked, let me at least do the dishes."

He smiles and shakes his head at her, like he can't quite believe her insistence. "All yours," he says, as he sets the dishes in the sink.

She gets into a rhythm, washing all the dishes as James puts the leftovers in the fridge. He eventually grabs a dishtowel and follows after her, drying all of the things she's just washed. It feels surprisingly domestic, honestly.

What's even more surprising is how much she likes that.

Once he's dried the last plate and stuck it back into the cabinet, he asks, "So I take it you want a rematch in Mario Kart at this point?"

"I… suppose that's an option," she answers, although beating James in a video game is most definitely not the first thing on her mind right now.

"You sound like you've got something else in mind," he observes.

"I do." She reaches out and runs her fingers down the side of his arm - although her hands are still a little damp from washing dishes, which kind of ruins the seductive effect she'd been hoping for.

But he seems to get the message anyways. And it has the consequence of making him temporarily short-circuit, apparently. "You - yeah - we can… we can definitely explore whatever else it is you've got in mind."

"Exploration is certainly one word for it," she says, taking half a step closer to him, feeling particularly emboldened by the way he's looking at her. "Or we can just call it what it is."

His hand finds her hip, almost automatically. "And that is?"

"Sex," she answers plainly.

His irises are almost fully overtaken by black at this point, and he's watching her like he wants to commit this moment to memory. And that's nice and all, she supposes, but there's so many better things he could be doing besides fucking studying her.

Like, you know, actually fucking her.

So she wraps her arms around his neck, pulls his face down to meet hers, and when their lips meet, it's electricity all over again. She feels it course through her veins as his hands tighten around her waist, closing the remaining space between them.

She's just as surprised by it this time as she was the first time - the intensityto which she feels this… _thing _between them. She was with Benjy not too long ago, so it's not like she's gone long enough without kissing anyone to forget what it feels like, but she can't remember anything ever feeling quite like _this_.

His hands trace the sides of her body oh-so-slowly, almost as if he's trying to memorise the curves of it by touch in the same way he was trying to memorise her by sight earlier, and it's absolutely _maddening_.

She slides one hand into his hair, pulling on it just enough to make him moan into the kiss, while the other hand slides across his shoulder, down his chest, resting on his abdomen, feeling the muscles tense under her touch everywhere she goes.

The tiny little logical voice in the back of her head reminds her that she's supposed to be trying to make him lose interest, and perhaps sex isn't the best way to make a guy _less _into her. She very quickly shuts that voice of reason down though, because it's only day three.

She's still got seven days to fuck things up. The bet can temporarily take a goddamn hike.

And yeah, she could probably do a lot of damage by intentionally being bad in bed, but honestly, even _with _the bet in play, why the fuck would she want to do that? Lily may be competitive to a fault, but she's also not stupid enough to intentionally sabotage what's already promising to be pretty good sex.

And truthfully, she's not even sure she'd be capable of sabotage at this point. With the heat already coiled in the pit of her stomach and the way the most innocent of touches is already driving her spare, she's entirely at the mercy of the hormones and adrenaline pumping through her veins.

The hand that was resting on her hip moves upwards, slipping underneath her shirt, and that first dose of skin-on-skin contact - that first taste of everything that's to come - has her teetering on the edge of control.

They're both still fully clothed and she is already so, _so _turned on.

She presses her hips against his, desperate for more. He's already hard - she can feel him through his jeans - so she's not alone in needing this to progress further.

James pulls his lips away from her mouth and starts kissing other parts - her jaw, along her neck, creating new shockwaves just underneath the skin with every gentle touch. And when he lightly nips at her pulse point, she can't help the little moan that escapes her.

Her hands find the hem of his shirt, tugging it upwards. "Take this off."

He pulls back from her, and there's no denying the fact that he looks pretty damn pleased with himself right about now. "Patience, Evans. We're getting there."

But he listens to her directions and pulls his shirt over his head, letting it fall to the ground. "Your turn," he tells her.

Her shirt very quickly joins his on the floor - although she's got half a mind to go ahead and fold it now, because leaving clothes in a heap really isn't something she enjoys doing. But when James kisses her again and they're fully skin-to-skin, everything intensifies. For all that he's been moving slowly and preaching patience, there's no denying that they're both rapidly approaching a fever pitch.

When his fingers dip underneath her bra and run along the side of her breast for the first time, she fully cracks. "As nice as making out in your kitchen is," she says breathlessly, "can we, I don't know, move this to an actual bed?"

"As you wish," he replies, grabbing her hand and starting to lead her towards the closed door that she assumes is his bedroom. "I'll have to kick Godric out of there first though."

Lily laughs, thinking of James' smushed-face kitty. "As much as I _do _want to meet your cat, introducing him to voyeurism probably isn't the best first impression."

That gets a laugh out of him as well, as he opens the bedroom door and starts looking around. After a moment, he crosses the room and comes back holding a large orange cat.

While he goes to put Godric down somewhere in the living room - she distinctly hears him tell the cat 'you'll just have to hang out here for the night, okay?' and can barely contain her giggle at that - Lily unhooks her bra and hangs it on his doorknob, before sitting right in the middle of his bed. The door's open just wide enough that the light from his living room makes her clearly visible, and it's almost too perfect a set-up.

So when James walks back into the bedroom, he's very effectively struck speechless.

And _goddamn _does it feel good to have the upper hand again.

He's on the bed and on top of her with remarkable speed, glasses clumsily ditched on the bedside table, and it doesn't take long until he's kissing her with a newfound intensity.

That kiss doesn't last too much longer before he drops his head down lower, running his tongue over one of her nipples before taking it into his mouth. She gasps and arches her back into him - because _fuck _if this isn't incredibly arousing, as if she wasn't sopping wet already - and one of his hands comes up to cup the other breast, his thumb swirling around the already-hardening nub.

She could get lost in this sensation, she really could, but she also really needs him to be in other places right about now, is practically squirming underneath him out of a need to be touched. She's about to tell him as much, but then his lips are moving up to her collarbone and neck and the hand that was on her chest starts moving downward, almost as if he knew what she was going to ask for before she could vocalise it.

When his fingers reach the button of her jeans, he picks his head up to look her in the eyes. "Is this okay?"

"Yes," she answers, practically stumbling over the word in an attempt to get it out as fast as she can. "Yes, this is absolutely okay."

He unbuttons her jeans with relative ease, but getting the damn things off is a different story entirely. She mentally scolds herself for wearing skinny jeans on a night when she _knew _there was a decent chance things would end like this, but it's too late for her to change that now, so she helps him out by shimmying her hips a little until he can finally pull them all the way off. Her underwear follows soon after.

Standing up at the end of the bed, he quickly undoes his own jeans and slides both them and his boxers off in one motion. She takes in the sight of him, completely naked, and _god_, he really _is_ fucking gorgeous, in a specifically just-her-type kind of way.

When he gets back onto the bed, instead of climbing on top of her and kissing her again like she was expecting, he settles himself between her thighs.

He starts slowly, pressing gentle kisses to the inside of her thigh, to the crease of her hip, and oh my god, she's going to _scream _if he doesn't fucking _touch her already_. "Please, just - "

James chuckles, and his warm breath against her is a tease in and of itself. "Evans, - "

"If you say 'patience' again, I _will _fight you."

"I don't think that's a satisfying outcome for either of us," he muses, before running his tongue along the length of her and holy _fuck _she almost comes undone right then and there.

One of her hands quickly finds purchase in his hair, as his arm comes to lay across her hips, keeping them firmly pressed into the mattress as he gradually ups the intensity, figuring out what makes her moan and sticking to it once he finds it. The tension in her stomach ignites again, building and building until she's on the very edge and quite positive she's going to explode with the pressure of it all.

And then he curls one, then two fingers inside of her, and the tension snaps.

She's not quite sure if the jumble of words coming out of her mouth even makes sense, but James continues his ministrations until she melts into the mattress, absolutely reduced to putty.

He gently kisses his way up her stomach, the hollow between her breasts, her collarbone, and finally, rests his forehead against hers.

"And to think," she says, unable to fight off the dopey grin on her face, "here I thought the only thing your mouth was good for was making inappropriately timed jokes."

He just laughs at that, before rolling onto his back and bringing her with him.

"Your turn?" she asks breathlessly, reaching between them to wrap her fingers around his length.

"To be perfectly honest," he says, punctuating his sentence with a quick kiss to her lips that folds into a groan as she strokes him, "I'd rather be inside you."

"That can be arranged," she replies cheekily, propping herself up on her hands. "Do you have a condom?"

"Uh, yeah. Top drawer of the nightstand."

She crawls over to the side of his bed with the rickety little white table, and slides open the top drawer. Sure enough, there's a number of them thrown in there relatively haphazardly - including a bright yellow one that catches her eye.

She looks over at James. "Why do you have banana-flavored condoms?"

He looks puzzled for a second, then laughs. "Those were probably a gag gift from Sirius at some point, in all honesty."

She grabs a decidedly _not _banana-flavored one and tears open the wrapper, leaving the foil packet on the nightstand.

"I've never really understood the appeal of flavored condoms," she says conversationally, as she crosses to the other side of the bed, straddles him, starts to roll the condom on. "I have never once, in my entire life, been giving a blowjob and been like, 'Huh, you know what would really improve this whole experience? If this tasted like strawberries.' I'd prefer _not_ to associate the taste of my favorite fruit with having someone's dick in my mouth, thank you very much."

Once the condom's on, she looks back up at James, who's been watching her intently. "I know you probably made a very valid point, but I should also probably let you know that I heard absolutely none of it."

"It _was_ a very valid point," she tells him, positioning herself above him. She's got a second part to that retort prepared, but she chooses instead to bypass that and sink down onto him, and _damn _if that wasn't the better decision.

"_Fuck_, Lily," James swears, his head falling back onto the pillow with a dull thud and his hands automatically moving to her hips.

"Working on it," she teases, placing her hands just above his shoulders and starting to ride him, slowly at first, feeling those knots in her stomach start to form anew.

She intends to keep up that pace for a little bit longer, to watch him squirm and get impatient in the same way he'd done to her before, but one of his hands moves up to her breast and pinches her nipple, and the other finds her clit again and - _fuck._

She gasps loudly and her arms almost give out underneath her. "God, yes, that again, please."

He swirls his fingers against her and it's just _so fucking good _and this time she actually does end up buckling at the elbows and closing the space between them. She presses a kiss against his cheek, to his jawline, and he uses the moment to wrap an arm around her middle and flip them around so that she's on her back.

She reaches up to brush her hair out of her face. "What makes you think you get to be on top now?" she says, as he props himself up on his elbows.

"Just figured we'd both benefit from a change in pace, is all," he replies cheekily, pulling one of her legs up under his arm before pressing into her again.

This time, it's her turn to swear loudly, because _holy shit _this angle is brilliant, and she wraps her legs around him, digging her heels into his back. His first few thrusts are slow and measured, and while Lily appreciates that giving him control hasn't resulted in him just jackhammering one into her, he needs to speed the fuck up _right now_.

She moans when he kisses the hollow of her neck, and she feels him chuckle against her skin. "How's that change of pace working out for you?"

"I - fuck you," she says breathlessly, her fingernails digging into his back as his hand moves between them again.

"Also working on it," he retorts, picking up the pace just a little.

And Lily wants to tell him that he can't just _use her fucking line against her like that_, but the words that actually escape her lips are much less of that and much more of "Yes, right there, oh my _god_."

"You're fucking incredible," James says against her skin. His strokes are shallower and more uneven now, and Lily can tell he's getting close.

But he's apparently determined to get her there first, because his fingers start to move faster and more insistently on her clit. She lifts her hips into it, and the shift is - "_James_."

It's probably fitting that that's the only word she's capable of getting out, because it's literally all that's in her head right now - James, James, James, repeated over and over like an anthem - everything is him, he's surrounding her and consuming her and she throws her head back against the pillow in ecstasy as she reaches her breaking point for the second time tonight.

And that moment was apparently his undoing as well; a few moments later, she hears him groan, feels his weight press her into the mattress.

He could very well stay there, crushing her into the pillows, for as long as he wants - Lily finds she rather likes the idea of being so pressed into him that she can't tell where her body ends and his begins - but he lifts himself off of her again, and before she even has the chance to properly open her eyes again, he's softly kissing his way up her neck and jaw, ending with a lingering kiss on her lips.

When he pulls back, Lily makes a noise that even she can admit sounds incredibly pathetic.

"I've got to get this thing off, you know," he says, laughing at the way she's pouting at him.

"Yeah, yeah," she says, waving him off and letting him get up.

When he goes into the bathroom, the first dose of reality hits her. How the hell is she supposed to be content with this being a one-time thing?

Fuck. She really, _really_ likes him.

And not just in a post-sex oxytocin-induced haze sort of way - but in a big, 'she could get used to everything over the past few days becoming her life now' sort of way.

If she wins this bet because he breaks up with her, because her initial assumptions were correct and, once he gets to know her better, it turns out he's not into her as much as he thought he was, she's actually going to be... well, at least a little bit heartbroken by it.

This was absolutely not an outcome she'd anticipated at _all_.

She's saved from pondering on that point for too much longer though, because James comes back from the bathroom and she has to get up to go as well. And when she comes back and joins him under the covers, he immediately pulls her close to him in a way that doesn't let her brain do much questioning.

So instead, she sinks into his touch and lets herself focus exclusively on the present. And in the present, he is definitely still very much interested in her.

"Well, I suppose I know how to earn it now," he comments mildly, as she intertwines one of her legs with his.

She blinks at him. "Earn what?"

"You called me James again," he says, grinning. "Apparently all I have to do to get you to call me James is make you come."

"This seems like a mutually beneficial situation for the both of us," she answers, as he starts to gently run his fingers through her hair.

The motion is so soothing, the featherlight brushes of his fingers on her scalp, and she starts to feel her eyelids grow heavier.

"Shit, we never actually ate any of the desserts, you know."

"That can be breakfast," she mumbles, curling her head closer into his chest. Dessert for breakfast is massively out of the realm of her normal acceptable behavior, but she's too damn comfortable right now to even think about leaving the bed.

Who needs dessert, really? This moment of bliss is sweet enough on its own.

He laughs softly at that, and she can feel it in his chest. "Okay, it can be breakfast," he relents.

There's a lot of shit bouncing around in her brain in the aftermath of tonight that she really needs to sort out at some point, but for now, she's perfectly content letting James' soft touch lull her to sleep.


	5. She Looks So Perfect

_DAY FOUR_

* * *

When James first wakes up with Lily Evans asleep in his arms, he's quite positive that he's still dreaming. Her hair is messily fanned across the pillow and his chest, and one of her legs is wrapped around one of his own. She'd woken up in the middle of the night and asked to borrow one of his T-shirts, so she's currently in a faded CUNY Soccer shirt of his.

The only evidence that this isn't just one of his fantasies is that the arm that's under her head has gone completely numb.

He almost wants to laugh at the fact that his original plan for winning this bet had involved him taking her out on their first date _tonight_, and he wasn't even sure if he was even going to try and _kiss _her then, much less… well, _this_.

He can't deny that he's still a little confused by it all - by how fast they've moved in three days after not even getting so much as a hint that she felt anything for him for two whole years - but at the same time, it's all felt so natural that he's really had no need to question it much.

Sirius will never let him live this down if James ever admits it, but that bet of theirs is maybe turning out to be one of the best things that's ever happened to him.

Lily starts to stir, and before he has the chance to consider whether or not it's weird that he's just been laying there looking at her, she opens her eyes.

Her bleary, half-awake expression is oddly endearing - when she's fully awake, she's a full-blown force of nature in constant movement, so seeing her so relaxed and still is like witnessing a totally different side of her.

It's a side he could very quickly get used to seeing.

"Alright, Evans?" he says, unable to stop himself from smiling at her.

"Mmm," she hums contentedly, stretching out. James subtly angles his hips away from her as she does so, suddenly much more aware of how his body has reacted to waking up right next to her.

"Good morning," she follows eventually, sitting up and stretching again, this time bringing her arms above her head.

"I wasn't planning on staying the night, you know." She leans back on her hands and looks down at him.

"I do know," he says, chuckling under his breath. "You told me multiple times last night. Most of them while you were in my bed and wearing my shirt."

She looks slightly bashful at that, and it's remarkably endearing. He's almost got half a mind to pull her back down to him, to maybe revisit all of the places they went last night, but he's interrupted from weighing that option by a rather insistent clawing at his bedroom door.

Lily immediately turns towards the noise. "Oh! Godric!"

She gets up out of the bed and moves to go open the door, and it finally gives James the chance to flex his fingers, trying to get the tingling sensation all down his arm to finally go away.

"Hello, sweet boy!" Lily says as she opens the door, in a tone James doesn't think he's ever heard out of her before.

"Be careful," he warns, "he's a little wary around - "

He doesn't really get to finish that thought, because his cat has already started nuzzling Lily's leg as she leans over to pet him.

"Yes?" Lily says, as Godric flops over onto his side to demand further petting.

James grins, having finally regained enough feeling in his arm to prop himself up on his hands. "Never mind."

Even his_ cat _instantly likes her. What are the fucking odds.

"You are just the fluffiest little guy, aren't you?" she coos. "James, he's purring!"

James is actually positive that, if hearts were capable of exploding, his would be a fucking wasteland at this point. He can actually _feel _it in his chest, the sheer amount of affection he has in watching her coddle his stupid cat that he loves more than most humans.

None of that is what he says out loud though. Instead, he chokes out a snarky, "Well, yes, cats occasionally do that."

"No wonder you were so offended someone graffiti'd him," she replies, paying no mind to his sarcasm as she turns back to face Godric again. "You're a _very _special kitty."

"Don't worry, I get it, Evans," he says with a laugh, getting out of bed. "You like my cat more than me."

"How can you _not _like this face?" she says, moving to run the back of her hand along Godric's cheek.

"How can you not like _this one_?" James replies, gesturing to himself, as he sidesteps her ripped skinny jeans lying on the floor.

Lily looks conflicted for a brief second, and James really has no idea what she's thinking about, but the frown is gone from her face almost as quickly as it appeared. "I think we've already established how I feel about your face, thank you very much."

"Oh, have we?" His tone is joking, but the underlying question is serious. They've spent quite a lot of time joking and flirting over the past few days (and then obviously, last night happened too), but James really has no idea what's _actually _happening here.

And it feels a bit too soon to pull out the whole 'what are we' conversation, given that they've only been on two dates, but… well, he's over a third of the way through this bet, and he _thinks _he might be winning, but he really can't be sure.

But Lily keeps it along the joking path. "And, you know, the attached physique," she adds, looking him up and down with a smirk on her face. He's only wearing a pair of boxers, so not much is left to her imagination.

"Just using me for my body then," he teases, because as much as he wants a serious answer, he doesn't want to ask that question seriously just yet. Not when things are this good without pushing them.

"And your cooking, obviously," she says, pausing her petting of Godric and standing up. His cat doesn't like the sudden lack of attention much, and starts softly butting his head against her shin. "You still have those desserts from last night?"

He laughs - half at her, half at his cat. "And here I thought you were joking about that last night - doesn't dessert for breakfast break all sorts of your rules?"

"I've broken a lot of my rules already," she says, with a shy sort of grin. "Might as well commit to it. Although I wouldn't say no to a cup of tea, if you've got it."

_Damn_, he should've remembered she's more of a tea person and picked some up from the store yesterday. Although, to be fair, he wasn't really expecting her to stay the night to begin with. "Afraid I've only got coffee," he answers.

"That'll work too," she says, walking out into his living area as he follows behind her, "although only if you've got milk and sugar."

"I do in fact have both of those things. One coffee, coming right up." He shoots her a pair of finger guns and heads to the kitchen area. "There's a couple of cat toys near the TV if you want - the wand is his favorite."

He busies himself with getting the coffee machine going and pulling the cardboard boxes of desserts out of his fridge. When he looks up again, Lily's taken his advice and has a feather dangling in front of Godric, as he jumps and paws at it.

That same feeling from earlier, that enormous thing settling in his chest and filling him up with the sheer force of it all, comes back just as powerfully, and _fucking hell_, it hits him how much he wants this to be his life _every _Saturday morning. He wants every Saturday morning to be spent like this, just watching Lily - maybe as his girlfriend, maybe as something more than that, somewhere down the line - play with his cat while he makes breakfast, all of it so stupidly domestic but absolutely fucking perfect.

He's known he liked her for a while, yes, but it's not until he's actually had all the possibilities of a life with Lily staring him in the face that it hits him just how badly he wants it. How badly he wants her.

The intensity of it is mind-boggling.

James' phone starts dinging repeatedly, and it's a slight distraction from the onslaught of thoughts in his head. Rather predictably, it's a series of text from Sirius.

_so _

_because i didn't have to be on a stakeout_

_remus and i had a bottle of wine each last night _

_we proceeded to drunkenly book a cabin for tonight in upstate_

_and like_

_a big one_

_with multiple bedrooms_

"How the hell are you _that _popular at nine a.m. on a Saturday?" Lily asks, not even looking up from watching Godric attempt to pounce.

James snorts as he starts to tap out a reply. "It's literally all Sirius. He's notorious for occasionally needing like ten messages to communicate a sentence."

**_good job?_**

**_i can't decide if you telling me means it's a good or a bad thing_**

_i'm telling you_

_because we might as well take advantage of the extra bedrooms_

_think of it as a free vacation_

_and ask lily to come_

**…**

**_this feels like a trap_**

James is, admittedly, very confused by this proposition. Isn't Sirius supposed to be rooting for him and Lily to _not _end up together by the end of this? Inviting the two of them to what essentially amounts to a double date doesn't really seem to accomplish that particular objective.

Unless he's got some master scheme to somehow make Lily dump him. (Can he be dumped? Are they even enough of anything that dumping would even be what it's called?)

The coffee pot dings to let James know it's done, so he busies himself with doling out the coffee between two mugs while waiting for Sirius to reply.

_honest to god it's not a trap_

_this isn't part of the bet, i swear_

_moony and i are just drunk (now hungover) idiots who want company_

_and tbh, we're actually HELPING you here_

_you should be GRATEFUL_

_and TRUST me instead of questioning my motives_

James snorts again at Sirius' dramatics, before tapping out a reply.

**_okay, fine_**

**_i'll ask lily_**

_good_

_text her and let us know what she says_

He can't help but smile to himself at Sirius' suggestion as he stirs the milk and sugar into Lily's coffee, because little does Sirius know that he doesn't need to text someone who's sitting in his living room wearing his college T-shirt.

He grabs her coffee and his, walking out to the couch and extending the much lighter-colored mug of coffee to her. "Evans?"

"Oh, thank you," she replies, taking the mug from him and bringing it up to her lips.

"If you haven't gotten sick of me yet," he starts, desperately hoping that he sounds casual, "Padfoot and Moony apparently drunkenly booked a huge cabin upstate for tonight and invited the both of us along."

She looks at him quizzically, the hand still moving the wand toy coming to a halt. "Both of us?"

"Sirius very specifically name-dropped you, yes."

Much to Godric's clear disappointment, she sets the toy on his coffee table and looks at him. "And do _you _want me to come? It sounds like I'd be intruding on some sort of boys' weekend, so if, you know, you'd rather invite Peter…"

He's kind of surprised by how uncertain she sounds. She's usually so confident with him, probably because it's painfully obvious to her how much he likes her - he really is utter shit at hiding it - so this visibly nervous version of her is unexpected.

"No, no, I definitely want you to come," he reassures her. "Plus, I don't think it's meant to be a boys' weekend, Padfoot made it sound more like a couples' thing, and - "

Shit.

"Not that we're necessarily a couple," he backtracks, because this was precisely the thing he _didn't _want to approach this morning. "Just, you know, whatever we are. Yeah."

He really needs to finish his coffee before he's allowed to open his mouth again.

"We can be whatever you want us to be," she replies, with a tone of nonchalance that even he can tell is faked. "I'm light and breezy."

And he can't help but bust out laughing at that. "Evans, I would call you a whole lot of things, but 'light and breezy' is definitely not one of them."

"And what would you call me then?"

"Oh no," he teases, "I don't spend all morning trying to get you to give me a straight compliment instead of doting on my cat just for you to get one out of me that easily."

She hums at that, setting down her coffee mug. "But I _did _compliment you. Both this morning and last night, if you recall."

She had, in fact, amongst other things, called him a good detective last night. And his work is something he takes pride in - necessary goofing off notwithstanding - so it _was_ a pretty nice thing to be complimented on, in fairness.

Suddenly, his mug is plucked out of his hand and joins hers on the table. "So really, you _owe_ mea compliment, if anything."

Before he really has time to process it, Lily's scooting closer to him and throwing her legs across his lap, her face just a few inches from his own.

He's got half a mind to just kiss her right then and there, but he's got a pretty good inkling Lily won't go down quite that easily.

And for all his teasing, he's really got no real reason notto tell her at least _some _of the things that have been floating around his head all morning anyways.

"You're beautiful," he tells her, slowly tracing circles on her exposed thighs with his fingers and watching with undisguised pleasure as a flush starts creeping up her cheeks, "and terrifyingly smart, and passionate, and insanely driven, and - "

He doesn't get to finish that last thought though, because she's closing what little space was left between them and taking his face between her hands as she kisses him.

She tastes like the coffee she's been drinking, and it wakes him up even more than caffeine ever could.

For as breathless as kissing Lily makes him, there's also something about it that feels as natural as breathing, and it makes him wonder how he managed quite this long in life without coming up for air.

His arms instantly move to her waist, but he makes sure to keep his hands on the outside of her T-shirt. He knows it's a _very_ slippery slope if he lets his hands wander, and while he's definitely not opposed to repeating last night at some point (and at many, _many_ points after that), he's perfectly content keeping this right where it is now.

"So," Lily says, in between kisses, "Black's cabin? What time do we leave?"

He pulls back, just far enough to properly look her in the eye. "You sure? You really don't have to come if you don't want to."

Her emerald eyes bear a level of intensity that he's really only seen when she's working on a particularly important case at the precinct. "I want to."

He can't help but grin. "I'll text Sirius for the details."

And while he'd love to go back to kissing her again, Godric picks that exact moment to jump up on the couch and nestle himself directly in the newly-created gap between the two of them.

* * *

Remus and Sirius come by with their car to pick up James a few hours later. After breakfast, Lily had gone home to pack an overnight bag, and it's probably for the best that they're not both getting picked up from James' apartment, anyways.

Sirius would no doubt have a _lot _to say about that one.

"I have to say," James says, as he gets into the backseat of the car, "I'm going to fully support any and all wine drinking between the two of you if it means I get a free weekend trip out of it."

"This is _not _going to become a regular occurrence," Remus replies, shifting the car into drive. "Our bank account can't handle this kind of nonsense."

"Don't act like you're not as excited about this trip as the rest of us, Moony," Sirius replies, clearly amused.

"Oh, I am," Remus answers. "But it'll lose its novelty if it becomes an everytime-we-drink thing."

Sirius clears his throat, and changes the subject entirely. "Am I allowed to ask for a bet update?"

"You're allowed to ask," James replies, "but that doesn't mean you're getting an answer."

"_Ugh_," Sirius groans, loudly and dramatically. "You're no fun."

"I mean, I don't know what you want me to tell you," James says, even though he knows of at least a couple details that would definitely serve as useful benchmarks for Sirius. "We're 'light and breezy,' as Evans called it."

Remus snorts at that. "Evans is literally everything _but _'light and breezy.' "

"That's what I said!"

The drive over to Lily's place doesn't take long at all, and, ever prompt, she comes out the front door of her building almost immediately after they pull up. She's traded last night's jeans and his shirt - what she'd gone home in - for a pair of black leggings and a tank top with a flannel tied around her waist.

After she throws her bag into the trunk, she gets into the backseat, grinning broadly. "Morning, boys," she says. James doesn't miss the way she looks at him for just a little bit longer than the other two, as if they're both in on some sort of shared secret.

And he supposes, in a way, maybe they are. While James may not have lied to Sirius or Remus about the extent of their relationship (or… whatever it is they're calling it), there are certainly a number of key details that they don't know about.

Of course, James supposes they won't be in the dark for too long, if he keeps up with looking at her with excessively dopey heart eyes like he's pretty sure he's doing right now.

Her hand reaches over to his and gives it a squeeze, before she looks back at the two boys in the front. "Thanks for inviting me, by the way."

"The pleasure is all James'," Sirius replies, and James can see his knowing smirk in the rearview mirror.

They start driving again, and it's slow going until they get out of the city, but as soon as they're on the freeway, the speed of traffic picks up significantly.

Their road trip soundtrack is a complete mess - as are all their attempts at collaborative Spotify playlists - alternating between Sirius' seventies rock, Remus' musical numbers, and James' contribution of the entire _1989 _album. It soon becomes a game for Lily, guessing which of the three boys was responsible for which song.

She's almost 100% accurate, which really shouldn't be surprising to any of them.

As the drive stretches into hours, the conversation slowly starts to dwindle; soon, it's just the music playing between them, and before long, Lily looks like she's about to fall asleep, moving around in her seat a little as she attempts to find a comfortable position.

"I've been told I make a good pillow," James comments, even though no one in his life has ever once said anything of the sort to him.

He half expects Sirius to call him out on that, but the other man is fast asleep in the passenger seat, and therefore didn't even hear the comment to begin with.

But Lily doesn't seem to question him, and simply undoes her seatbelt, moves to the middle seat, does it back up again (because of _course _she'd never once think about riding without a seatbelt), and curls up against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

He starts to get tired too, not long after. It was really only a matter of time, anyways; he's still a bit sleep-deprived from staying up late on Thursday night to make his tornado of an apartment presentable for Lily, and waking up early with her this morning didn't do much to help things either.

So he leans his head against hers, and the last thing he remembers doing before falling asleep is resting his hand atop the one of hers that's currently resting on his thigh.

When he wakes up, his line of sight is a totally different one from when he first fell asleep, and it takes him a moment to realise that his head is now in Lily's lap. She's talking to Remus about something, maybe a book that they've both read? James doesn't have enough context to tell, but their conversation comes to a halt as he sits up.

"Sleep well?" Lily asks him.

"Mm," is the only noise that comes out of his mouth, as he straightens out his glasses, which have managed to go completely lopsided while he slept.

"We're only about ten minutes away, so that was pretty impressive timing," Remus adds.

"Oh, wow." James is still only halfway awake, and therefore only half capable of forming sentences. He turns to Lily. "How long did you - ?"

"Only about an hour or so," she answers. "And as soon as I moved my head off of you, you immediately responded by laying down on top of me."

That sounds _exactly _like something his sleep brain would do.

"Also, you've got - " She gestures vaguely to the top of his head, which he takes to mean that his already out-of-control hair has managed to stick up in an ever weirder way than normal.

He runs a hand through his hair, hoping that's enough to get it back under control again - although he knows from experience that it takes a hell of a lot more effort than just some finger-combing to get his hair to cooperate in any way, shape, or form.

Lily confirms it. "That didn't do anything," she tells him, amused.

"Yeah, well, my hair doesn't like listening to directions, so…"

"Hmm, I wonder where it gets _that _trait from," she muses.

He would actually argue that, when it matters, he's _very _good at taking direction. "Technically, my hair is entirely a result of genetics rather than personality traits, so the blame for this one falls entirely on my parents, not my tendency to view rules as suggestions, which I know is where you were going with that one."

She looks mock-affronted. "You can't just _predict _my lines - that's not how this works."

"On the contrary," he retorts, running his fingers through his stubborn hair one more time, "it means _you_ need to get more creative with your lines."

"Oh god, Remus, they're worse than we were," Sirius says dramatically - James didn't even know he was awake yet. "Look what you're going to have to put up with all night."

It's too good to pass up. "Look what you're going to have to put up with all night - title of your sex tape."

Lily snickers at that, and James feels a rush of pride. He doesn't usually get a laugh out of her on those lines.

Remus turns the car up a gravel driveway, and they head up the sloping path until a cabin comes into view. True to Sirius' texts, it's a pretty big one, set on the edge of a hill overlooking a massive forest. He can see why this would be the type of place you book when you're scrolling through Airbnb after a bottle of wine.

Not that scrolling through Airbnb is a thing _he_ does when he's been drinking - he's much more of the type to attempt drunk Super Smash Bros or watch terrible rom-coms on Netflix than to scroll through houses, but… the appeal is understandable.

The inside of the house is just as artfully rustic as the exterior - it's one of those places that's filled with furnishings designed to make you feel like you're roughing it in a 'real' log cabin, but in reality everything was probably bought at some inexplicably expensive suburban furniture store.

James, instantly curious, starts peeking into rooms, not even bothering to set his duffel bag down. The first door he opens leads to an expansive bedroom with an attached balcony, adorned with the same flannel blankets as the living room, with a quote decal about love above the bed that even James, who's the absolute king of cheesiness, can admit is a little kitschy.

"Think this is the master bedroom, Pads," James calls out to Sirius, who's doing the exact same thing as him and looking behind one of the other doors.

"Holy fuck, this is _too _perfect," he says, laughing and ignoring James' comment entirely.

"What is?"

Sirius turns back to face James, a wicked smirk on his face. "See for yourself, _Prongs_."

The unnecessary emphasis on his nickname is oddly unsettling, so James doesn't entirely know what to expect when he looks into the room Sirius is standing in front of.

It doesn't take him long to figure out though. Sirius has managed to find the other bedroom, and above this bed is yet another kitschy decal.

Except this time, it's the silhouettes of a stag and doe.

Sirius starts laughing hysterically. "I swear, neither Moony or I even _saw _that when we booked this, but damn, that's fucking incredible."

Lily picks that exact moment to walk into the cabin, her bag hitched up on her shoulder. "What's so funny?" she asks, taking in the fact that Sirius is practically doubled over.

"He's just massively entertained by the deer silhouettes in our room," James replies, because Sirius clearly isn't coherent enough to answer.

Lily cocks her head at that. "I thought Prongs was a reference to the fork thing?"

"Well, yes," Remus says, having entered the cabin just after Lily. "But it also works as a nod to the fact that James dressed up as a reindeer for Halloween every year through college just for the sake of making deer puns at everyone for the entire night."

"Deer puns?" She looks at him, clearly confused as to what that entails.

So he just nods solemnly. "The possibilities are _stag_gering."

"_Fuck no, _not again," Remus replies, clearly exasperated with his 'awful' puns.

"I think you mean… _buck_ no."

"Beyond James' abysmal sense of humour, I think you might have another problem here," Sirius interjects, although the devious look on his face suggests that this is, in fact, not something he considers a problem at all. "There's only one bed in here."

James has to fight off the urge to laugh, because Sirius _clearly _thinks he's creating drama and is going to get one or both of them flustered with this news.

"I mean, I suppose one of you could sleep on the couch or something, if you're not -"

He starts to tell Sirius that it won't really be a problem, but Lily beats him to the punch. "We've already fucked, I think we can handle sharing a bed."

It's a little bolder than what James would've opted for, but _fucking hell_ is it 100% worth it for the look on Sirius' face. His mouth falls wide open as he looks back and forth between the two of them in quick succession. "You, and you… _what_?"

Lily, for her part, is surprisingly nonchalant given the bomb she just dropped, and walks between James and Sirius to put her bag down in their room. As she walks by James, she does this coy little wink that makes his heart do all sorts of weird flip-flopping things in his chest.

He eventually looks back over at Sirius, who still looks positively gobsmacked. In truth, that's still kind of how James feels about this whole situation in his head, but he's getting better about faking at least a little bit of chill. So he just shrugs at his friend, with a _'what can you do?' _sort of smirk on his face, before following her into their bedroom.

He automatically closes the door behind him as he does so - which is kind of funny when he thinks about it, because it means he essentially just shut the door in Sirius' face.

Lily's got her bag set on the bed and she's poking through it, and James can't help but say the very first thing that comes to mind. "That was nothing short of incredible."

"Honestly, the look on Sirius' face is something I'll treasure for the rest of my life," Lily says with a laugh. "Although really, I'm a bit surprised you hadn't already told him. I was bracing myself for an inappropriate comment as soon as I got in the car today."

James shrugs. "Eh, I figured I'd save you that embarrassment."

Really, he retained that information to save _himself _from embarrassment more than anything, because heaven knows Sirius would've had a fucking heyday making jokes at James' expense for no other reason than that he _knows _James is guaranteed to get flustered about anything involving Lily.

"Well, I've subjected myself to that embarrassment now, I suppose," she hums. "Although I don't really know what exactly I'd be embarrassed about. Unless Sirius is one of those people who likes to shame people for having sex on the first - or second, I guess - date, and in that case, he can fuck right off."

James instantly feels the need to defend his friend. "No, it wouldn't be like that."

"Then I doubt a couple of dumb jokes would've _actually _embarrassed me."

It's kind of amazing that she can manage to be entirely unflustered about things like this. She's not completely unflappable - James has seen her _very _flustered when it comes to work-related things - but he admires her confidence in the exact sorts of things that he himself has not yet figured out how to navigate without wanting to sink into the floor.

He's trying to work out how to say some iteration of that out loud in a way that doesn't sound extremely weird, but she changes the subject before he gets there. "So, what exactly are we _doing _now that we're up here in some cabin in the middle of nowhere?"

That is… a very good question, and one that James absolutely doesn't know the answer to. So he walks back over to the door and pulls it open. Sirius is no longer standing in front of their doorway - he's presumably gone into the master bedroom - but Remus is currently scoping out the kitchen.

"Hey Moony, what are we doing now?"

"I was thinking we'd go for a hike?" Remus replies. "And then go on a food run after that? Unless you two are eager to break in your _one bed_." That last remark is accompanied by a smirk.

Truly, sometimes James forgets that Remus can be just as bad as his fiancé on occasion.

"A hike sounds nice," James replies, choosing to take the high road and ignore the jab entirely. Or, on second thought… "We've got all night to break in our _one bed_."

Remus just rolls his eyes, likely accepting that he's not going to be able to embarrass James anymore with this one. "Great, I'll let Sirius know that's the plan then," he replies, before quickly clarifying, "The hike part, that is."

Approximately half an hour later, they're all in clothes that are at least vaguely appropriate for hiking - James' Chacos are _fine_, he's insisted multiple times, it's not like they're scaling Everest or anything like that - and leaving the cabin.

They're really situated quite perfectly - there's a trail that starts just up the street from them, and it's a pretty scenic walk from the very start.

Somehow, James falls into step with Sirius, while Lily and Remus linger a good bit behind them.

"This is now _two _important bet updates you've failed to give me," Sirius comments, just loud enough that only James can hear him.

James looks at him, confused. "What was the other one?"

"You two kissing on your first date," Sirius answers. "I had to find _that _one out from the guilty looks on both of your faces the next day."

He shrugs, not really sure why it's any of Sirius's business anyways. "I just… you wouldn't care about any of that shit if it weren't for this stupid bet, anyways."

Sirius scoffs at that. "Are you kidding me? Yes, I was pretty sick of hearing you pine over her for the past couple of years, but actually getting together with her? I absolutely fucking care about that."

"We're not… we're not _together_ though," he reasons. "Neither of us have really talked about what it is that we're doing here, and you know as well as I do that sex doesn't necessarily mean there's a relationship there."

It's the first time he's voiced this particular insecurity aloud, and maybe it's unwise to do so with the person he's got a bet against, but right now it feels like Sirius has fallen much more into best-friend mode rather than bet-competitor mode, so James doesn't really think twice about it.

"I mean, yeah, you're not wrong there," Sirius says, shrugging. "But for what it's worth, there's been more than one moment today where she's been looking at you with the same fucking doe eyes you've been making at her for heaven knows how long - which makes me really doubt that was 'just sex' for her."

James feels hope bubble in his chest - it doesn't completely outweigh his nervousness about the tenacity of their current situation, but it helps that someone _else _is confirming that she seems to… well, actually like him.

"Which is a major fucking disappointment on my end," Sirius adds. "Given, you know - "

He doesn't get to finish that sentence - which would've presumably been a reference to what's at stake in their bet - because Lily and Remus apparently choose that exact moment to run and catch up with them, something that's foretold by feet pounding on the dirt trail behind them.

"Would be nice if you waited up," Lily jokes, sidling up to James with a sassy sort of smile on her face.

"Your fault for walking slow."

It's a bit awkward now - four of them trying to walk all in one line on a trail that's really only meant to be two people wide at most - so James slows down just a little, letting Remus and Sirius take the lead.

"I must say," Lily comments, looking around them, "I'm a big fan of Remus and Sirius' drunken mistakes. When I drink too much, I just get louder and turn everything into a competition - I don't accidentally book weekend getaways in the mountains."

"You and me both, Evans," he replies, thinking back to a moment not too long ago where drinking had, in fact, made him loud and competitive, and had gotten him tied up in a bet that he's still not really sure what to do with.

"You know, I'm not sure if we've ever been drunk together, now that I think about it."

James immediately thinks back on numerous department outings to a bar up the street from the precinct. "Are you not counting any of the times the squad has gone out for drinks?"

"I've seen you drunk, yes," she says with a nod. "But I've never had more than two drinks at any of those - I'd _never_ risk making a fool of myself in front of Dumbledore and Shacklebolt."

He raises his eyebrows at her. "And three drinks is somehow the threshold into making a fool of yourself?"

"Three-Drink Lily laughs at literally everything, so yes," she answers primly, and the certainty with which she delivers that line throws him off for a second.

"You... you've given yourself drinking personalities?"

She hums. "Not so much as I've given them to myself as it's been revealed that I follow a very predictable pattern directly proportional to the volume of alcohol I've consumed."

He can't help but laugh at that, because _god_, everything about that is just _so _Lily. "Only you, Evans. Only you."

There's a beat of silence between them, but James quickly finds a way to fill it. "You know what this means, right?"

She looks over at him, eyebrows ever-so-slightly scrunched together in a way that James really shouldn't find all that endearing but does anyways. "No… what?"

"You and I are getting drunk together," he replies resolutely. "I need to experience the Lily drunkenness scale firsthand."

"Tonight?"

He gestures to the trees and rocks around them. "I mean, we're in the middle of nowhere with absolutely zero cell reception - what else are we going to do for an evening other than drink?"

She seems to consider that for a second. "I'm game."

"Great," he replies. "A grocery trip is already in the cards anyways - we'll just make an alcohol run while we're at it. Drink of choice?"

"Whiskey Diet Coke," she answers immediately.

"I think we can make that happen, even if Diet Coke _is _a garbage mixer," he says with a grin, and looks between them to realise that, somehow, their hands are intertwined.

_He _doesn't remember doing that. Although, he also doesn't even remember _her _grabbing his hand either, and he's always got such a constant radar on what she's doing that he doesn't know how he would've missed that either.

But despite having no clue what the origin of it was, he's not upset about it, and he's _certainly _not going to pull his hand away.

"Well that's a garbage opinion," Lily retorts, too caught up in bantering with him to notice where his eyes have dropped to. "What else would you mix whiskey with?"

"Regular Coke, like god intended." He looks up at her face again, wearing a challenging expression. "Diet Coke tastes like chemicals."

"Regular Coke tastes like chemicals _and _too much sugar, that's _worse._"

He shrugs, which is a bit awkward because he doesn't want to disturb their entwined hands (lest she pull hers away) so it ends up being more of a one-shouldered thing. "Agree to disagree, I suppose," he hums. "More of the good stuff for me."

"If the two of you would quit arguing about soda, you might actually notice the view," Sirius' voice rings out from ahead of them, and James looks up at the scenery and away from Lily.

Sirius is right - it's pretty damn stunning. The trees have thinned out, and they're high enough that they can see for miles. There's an outline of more mountains in the distance, backlit by the afternoon sun, and the valleys below them are filled with greenery.

They walk to the edge of the path, stopping to admire everything for a little while longer. James has a sudden urge to move even closer to Lily while they're standing here, and for once, he lets himself do it without questioning it too much. He takes a half step behind her, wrapping his arms around her so that her back is against his chest.

She tenses up for half a second, but he doesn't even have enough time to panic about that, because she immediately relaxes into him, leaning her head back against his chest.

"Kinda makes you wonder why on earth we'd want to live in a city, doesn't it?" she says, almost  
wistfully.

James hums at that. "I suppose," he muses. "Although I've never lived anywhere other than a city, so..."

"Ah, right, your parents have some fancy place on the Upper East Side, don't they?" She leans her head back just the tiniest bit further to look up at him.

"Er, yeah," he answers, a bit surprised that she knows that. He and Sirius have definitely mentioned going to his parents' place on numerous occasions at the precinct, but he wouldn't have expected her to remember that. "They've had that place since before I was born, so it's… it's all I've known."

Lily sighs, and it's almost a laugh. "Small towns are… nice, in a way. Granted, I couldn't wait to get out of the one I grew up in, but… still. It's fun to romanticize them sometimes."

"Do you ever regret it? Leaving, I mean?" James is distantly aware that Remus and Sirius have already started walking onwards, but he figures they can catch up later.

"Not in the slightest," Lily answers resolutely. "I would've been _miserable _there."

She says it so emphatically that he's sure there's got to be some deeper backstory, but before he gets the chance to ask about it, she's spinning around in his arms and pulling his grip loose.

"Come on," she grins at him, tone completely different now, "we should catch up with Black and Lupin before they start giving us shit again."

He still has so many questions he wants to ask, but instead he lets her take his hand again and half-jogs with her to catch up with his friends.

* * *

True to his promise, it's not long after they've all finished dinner that James pulls out whiskey and both Coke _and _Diet Coke for the evening, pouring drinks for both himself and Lily. Sirius and Remus, on the other hand, decide to split a bottle of wine for the second night in a row, largely on account of the fact that there's no cell service or WiFi out here, so it's impossible for them to drunkenly book _another _weekend cabin trip while wine-drunk.

They start with a deck of cards, playing Bullshit until it becomes obvious that the game will kill Remus exclusively, because the rest of them are pretty convincing liars and Remus is hopeless. So then they switch to Suicide, which is a million times worse and means that they're refilling their glasses almost constantly.

"What point on your drunkenness scale are we on right now?" James asks, grinning over at Lily cheekily as she pours Diet Coke into her cup.

"That was Four-Drink Lily, and she's loud and has no filter," she tells him, louder than necessary in the otherwise quiet house. "This," she waves her freshly mixed glass around, "is going to be Five-Drink Lily, who is competitive as hell."

She says it in complete seriousness, and James can't help but laugh. "You mean to say sober Lily _isn't _competitive as hell?"

She just grins at him. "Just you wait."

Sure enough, her drink is about half full when she attempts to challenge Sirius to a wrestling match, and Sirius, being equally as drunk, accepts the challenge. It's only when Remus delicately points out to Sirius the flaws in this potential plan that he backs down from Lily's challenge.

Six-Drink Lily likes to dance, James soon learns. She turns their road trip playlist back on, swaying around the living room and moving with absolutely zero grace. And even though it shouldn't be, James finds it incredibly endearing.

"James!" she spins to face him, beaming. "Dance with me!"

It's such a wild contrast to the person he's so used to seeing in the precinct every day, the Lily who's so perfectly put-together and serious. Neither is worse than the other, per say, but it's just... _different_. Unexpected.

Nonetheless, he gets up to 'dance' with her, although it's mostly her just holding onto his hands while she does her own moves - occasionally she'll throw a little spin in there as well.

At some point during all of this, Remus and Sirius have snuck off into their own bedroom, so it's just him and Lily in the room when the song changes. James recognizes the soft chords immediately - it's one of his own contributions to the road trip playlist, after all - but he's not entirely sure how Lily will react to the sudden change of pace.

She takes the slower tempo in stride, taking a step towards James and wrapping her arms around his neck. "Alright, now you're required to _actually _dance with me."

And so he does just that, wrapping his arms around her waist and moving in time with her. Neither of them are even remotely sober, so it's far from a perfect slow dance, but they find a rhythm well enough.

Once James is confident enough that he's not going to accidentally trip or step on her toes, he starts paying attention to the actual song again, and more importantly, looking at Lily.

She's watching him with a soft drunken smile on her face, and the lyrics of the song are all about mornings at his place and kisses on sidewalks and _love_ and it's all a little too close to home and -

Oh god.

Oh _god_.

It's definitely not the first time today that he's felt something like this, but it _is_ the first time that it's actually scared him.

There's nothing to distract him from the truth of the matter this time. He's falling in love with her, and _hard_. Harder than he has any right to be falling for someone after only a few days of… whatever it is they're doing, long-term crush notwithstanding. Something in his chest tightens, making it that much harder to breathe, and he suddenly feels like his skin is on fire, and not in a good way.

His arms drop from around her waist and he takes a jerky step back, bringing their dancing to an abrupt halt. One of his hands immediately reaches up to nervously run through his hair, and he immediately wants to look anywhere but at Lily. It's no use though, because he can practically envision the confused expression on her pretty features as she asks, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, excellent," he lies. "I just… need some fresh air. Yeah."

He doesn't wait for her to respond, just walks around her to the sliding glass doors and pushes one open. There's a noticeable temperature drop when he steps outside, but it does little to fix the actual problem.

He can't keep doing this - not knowing where they stand or what they even are. Not when he's feeling like this. And under any other circumstances, four days would probably be way too soon for the 'what are we' question - any honestly, even in these circumstances, maybe it's still too soon - but this is Lily.

And bet or not, he needs to know what's happening between them before he gets himself in any deeper.

But fuck, is he already in deep.


	6. low key in love

DAY FIVE

* * *

When Lily wakes up with her body fully intertwined with James', she goes through two levels of surprise about it. The first is because waking up to him is just an unfamiliar thing in general - five days ago, they were nothing but coworkers, so waking up in bed with him two days in a row qualifies as a pretty dramatic shift from the norm.

The second is because of what happened last night. Six-Drink Lily is a dancer by nature, so she could've predicted that after six drinks she'd be dragging James up to dance with her; what she couldn't have predicted, however, was his reaction to it. They'd been having such a nice time dancing - or at least, _she'd _thought they were having a nice time - when all of a sudden… James wanted nothing to do with her. He went out to the balcony alone while Six-Drink Lily rapidly sobered into something more akin to Two-Drink Lily, and when he'd come back, he was different.

Not _cold_, per say, but certainly colder. They'd both retired to the bedroom, and when they'd both crawled into bed, he'd deliberately stayed on his own side, rolling over onto his side to face away from her. Clearly they'd shifted in their sleep, but they hadn't even been touching when they first fell asleep.

So much for 'taking advantage of the one bed.'

Of all the things Lily imagined might've pushed James away from her, a drunken proclivity for dancing wasn't it. Although, she supposes, it _is _a distinct departure from the perfectly-put-together Lily he usually sees at work. And maybe he _does_ only like that part of her, so she supposes it could fit into her theory, in a way.

And if that's the case… well damn, he should've gotten to see Seven-Drink Lily. That would've had him swearing off her completely, she bets.

She doesn't get any more time to think on that, because James rouses next to her, humming softly as the arm wrapped around her waist tightens.

If she'd been hoping to get out of this position before he woke up, it's a lost cause now.

Will he regret it - this position they're in - when he does? Will he push her away again, like he did last night?

She knows that's what she's meant to be hoping for - it would mean she's actually been right about him all along - but it still hurts a little to think about. Almost more than her head already hurts from all the whiskey last night.

Instead of waiting to see how he reacts upon waking, Lily decides that the smarter option is just to pretend she hadn't woken up at all. So she closes her eyes again, trying her best to keep her breathing slow and level even as her heart beats much faster in her chest.

It's an agonising few seconds while she waits to see if he wakes up or not - and sure enough, she gets an acknowledgement that he has in fact fully woken up just a few seconds later, in the form of a soft laugh and a, "Of fucking course."

Which she's got… absolutely no clue what to make of, because that's a statement that has a whole host of potential connotations, both good _and _bad.

But he doesn't move away or let go of her, which is hopefully a good sign? Although she supposes even _that_ is subjective, because what she's instinctively considering 'good' and 'bad' take on totally opposite forms when the bet is accounted for.

Fuck, she _hates_ that she's so invested in overthinking everything right now. The minor hangover is a nuisance enough without having to parse out all of her incredibly complicated feelings.

There's no way she's actually going to be able to fall asleep again, so she figures the ruse is up - she slowly opens her eyes, doing her best to pretend like this is the first time she's doing so.

When she looks at James, his eyes immediately snap to hers. "Good morning," she greets, surprised when her voice comes out much scratchier than intended.

"Morning," he returns with a smirk. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," she answers, and before she can stop herself, adds, "Look, I'm sorry if I… I don't know, made you uncomfortable last night? Or - "

He cuts her off before she can figure out how to end that sentence. "You didn't do anything. I just," he pauses for a moment, looking like he's wracking his brain for how to phrase things, "needed a moment to think."

"... Oh." She still feels like there's something he's not telling her.

Before she even gets a chance to decide whether or not it's worth it to prod any further, there's a knock on the door. "You up?"

"Is that supposed to be a booty call?" James retorts, before looking at Lily with a smirk. "Because while I'm flattered, I don't think your fiancé would approve."

Lily can practically _hear _Remus' eye roll. "Do you want breakfast? Sirius is making eggs and pancakes."

James raises his eyebrows at her, as if checking for her response. "Yeah, we'll be out in a minute," she answers, removing herself from his grip and starting to get out of bed.

It's for the best, putting a little distance between them right now, because him looking at her like that - like they're sharing some private joke or moment - is making her want to do something stupid, like start kissing him again.

And what if he pushes her away this time? It's a rejection she's expecting to happen at some point anyways, but delaying the inevitable seems like a better option right now. At least, delaying it until she's had a little space from him and can finally get her head back on straight.

She can see James looking at her, and it's only when she starts putting a sweatshirt on over her pajamas that he finally seems to snap out of it and get out of bed as well.

Outside their bedroom, Sirius is indeed hard at work in the kitchen, and there's a telltale sizzle as he pours pancake batter onto a greased pan. Lily goes about making herself a cup of tea - there's no kettle here, so she'll have to stoop so low as to stick her mug in the microwave to make it - and James follows right after her to pour himself a cup of coffee.

Sirius has some grungy 90's punk music playing, and it's a bit of a hilarious contrast to the otherwise soothing environment of a lazy morning in a cabin in the woods.

Breakfast is nice - Sirius seems to have finally run out of innuendos, at least for the time being, so the entire meal is just a lot of friendly chatter. Remus tells Lily about the time he accidentally drank his goldfish, and she laughs so hard she almost snorts tea out of her nose.

"I was hungover and half asleep!" he defends, although it's a lost cause at this point. "I suppose the real mistake was keeping a pet in a drinking glass to begin with."

"That poor fish," Lily replies sympathetically, although the effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that she's still smiling.

"Somehow, _I'm _the only one of us who's ever managed to keep a pet alive," James grins. "Which is really terrifying when you think about it - the idea that _I'm _the most responsible one."

"Positively chilling," Lily agrees, before reaching over with her fork and stealing a bite of pancake off of James' plate. He's been too occupied with talking to finish his food anyways, and she doesn't want to bother with getting a whole new pancake.

James doesn't notice until she's already got the fork in her mouth. "Evans!" he yelps, clasping his hand over his heart like he's been personally affronted. "I can't believe you - resorting to petty theft!"

She can't help but roll her eyes at his dramatics, swallowing the stolen bite of pancake before answering, "Only when it comes to breakfast food."

"That's an awfully slippery slope, morally," he retorts. "First it's just breakfast food, then it's lunch, and next thing you know, you're running off with the whole damn dinner roast."

He looks so serious as he says it, so committed to the bit, that Lily can't help but laugh, even as she shakes her head at him.

"Fuck, you two are _actually _an old married couple," Sirius chimes in, and Lily almost jumps when she remembers that it's not actually just the two of them.

She opens her mouth to respond - hoping that some sort of retort is on the tip of her tongue - but she's cut off by James standing up abruptly. When she looks up at him, his expression is unreadable.

"I should go pack," he says, and it's stiff and awkward-sounding and not at all like his normal voice.

There's also the fact that he never actually unpacked his stuff to begin with, so Lily's pretty sure that he's got nothing to actually pack.

"Prongs," Remus says, in an attempt to get James to turn back around. It doesn't work, and James goes into their bedroom and closes the door behind him.

Lily turns to face Sirius and Remus, hoping for some sort of answer from them about what just happened, but they look just as clueless as she is.

And somehow, she knows that she's the one that needs to go talk to him. Somehow, this is about her.

"I'm going to go - " she addresses the other two, gesturing her head in the direction of the door in lieu of finishing her sentence. They both nod.

When she walks into the bedroom, as predicted, James is staring at an already-packed duffel bag. She shuts the door behind her and leans against the doorframe, trying to give off slightly more confidence than she actually feels right now.

"Want to tell me what's bothering you?"

He jumps at the sound of her voice, even though he _had _to have heard her come in. One of his hands immediately goes up to run through his hair, making it stick up at a strange angle that somehow still looks good on him.

"Shit, I - fuck, I - " he trails off again after that, clearly at a complete loss for words. Then he sighs loudly, before answering, "It's you."

Lily feels something heavy settle in her stomach like lead - dread or fear or anxiety or some combination of the three.

He's about to say he's done with her, she can feel it.

Is this… is this what her bet is about to come to? Five days and far more emotional attachment on her end than she'd ever possibly anticipated?

"Me?" Her voice sounds so much smaller and more vulnerable than she'd meant for it to - it honestly almost sounds like she's about to cry.

James suddenly looks at her, wide-eyed. "Oh, _fuck_, not like - I could've phrased that _so _much better, I just - "

He takes a deep breath, then tries again. "All of this is just fucking with my head. What are we doing here?"

Lily has no idea what he's talking about, and she's still trying to make sense of her own emotions, so she just goes with a, "What do you mean?"

"I'm normally fine with a little chaos and uncertainty - hell, I _thrive _init," he begins. "But… not with this." And then softer, "Not with you."

She feels like his eyes are burning a hole through her, like the weight of his gaze is going to swallow her whole. And what's worse is that she can't stop herself from matching his intensity, from looking right back into his eyes and letting herself get lost in them.

"Is this - are we together? I know it'd normally be way too early to be talking about this or trying to define anything, but _none _of this feels normal, and - "

"Yes," Lily answers immediately, her mouth moving entirely independently of her brain. "I think we are. At least, I'd like it if we are."

Now James is the one who's suddenly speechless - Lily bets he wasn't expecting her to have an answer that quickly, to require so little persuasion before saying 'yes.' Hell, _she _wasn't expecting herself to have an answer that quickly.

But then he smiles at her, and it's so genuine and happy that she feels the weight in her gut dissolve into warmth, and she can't even overthink about her panicked response just yet or the implications that it comes with.

She finds herself walking across the room to stand in front of him without ever consciously making the decision to do so - she can now add her legs to the list of body parts that are acting without any prior instruction from her brain, it seems - and when she does, she loops her arms around his neck and looks up at him.

"I'd like it too," he says, looking at her with just as much intensity as before, but under entirely different circumstances.

He leans down and kisses her, and it sends warmth all the way down to her toes. And then he slides one hand under her shirt while the other grabs her ass, and that subtle warmth in her veins is suddenly _boiling hot_. She's so immensely caught up in it, so fully immersed in the feeling, that she barely notices when they both fall back onto the bed, a mess of wandering hands and burning touches.

James starts to kiss down her neck as she hooks a leg around him and presses her hips fully against his, and the mix of all the sensations - his lips, his hands, his proximity - means that she can't control the moan that comes out as his teeth graze her pulse point.

Her logical side reminds her that she probably shouldn't have done any of this - shouldn't have said 'yes' to him when he asked if they were dating, shouldn't be jumping into bed with him like this now - but she can't help but lose a little control with him.

She's only just slid her hands underneath the fabric of his T-shirt when -

"These walls aren't as soundproof as you think they are!"

They jump apart at that, both wide-eyed as they look at each other and then the door, and then all of a sudden the mood has shifted completely and they're both laughing hysterically.

"Fuck off, Padfoot," James yells at the door, before turning back to Lily, still laughing as he wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her close to him again.

* * *

Lily feels like she's in some sort of bubble for the rest of the morning, where nothing really matters except her apparently-now-boyfriend and the weird little skip-jump her heart does every time she thinks of him as that. But as with all bubbles, it's only a matter of time until it bursts.

What ultimately ends up popping said perfect bubble is the simultaneous dinging of everyone's phones as they start to drive home, and finally find themselves back in an area with consistent cell service.

Lily looks at her phone, lit up with a mess of random notifications, and immediately notices the text from Mary. Even without reading the message itself, she feels her stomach drop a little bit, because _fuck _she'd completely let the bet slip from her mind over the past few hours. She'd just been fully occupied with James, who's been lovely and nothing like she'd anticipated when she made this wager on Tuesday, and…

**_five days in… potter still sticking around? ;)_**

He has… more than stuck around, but Lily can't bear to give Mary an update that so clearly illuminates _just _how far off-track Lily's course of action has gone.

_I hear Peter's gouda has gotten better since last time, you'll have to let me know._

_Everything is going exactly how I expected it to._

Which is the lie of the fucking century, she thinks to herself after she hits send.

But instead of dwelling on it or waiting to see how Mary responds, Lily flips to a totally different contact and starts typing furiously, making sure that her phone screen is visible to no one in the car but herself.

_S O fucking S_

_I have a major problem_

The little three dots pop up on Marlene's end immediately, and Lily thanks her lucky stars that her friend is so on top of her text messages.

**_i'm ready_**

**_give me all the drama_**

_So you know how I was going to Potter's on Friday night, yeah?_

**_yesssss_**

_Well, um, I… may or may not have slept with him._

**_asdfhalohgagafh_**

**_LILY EVANS YOU MINX_**

**_how was it?_**

_I can't believe you're asking me that._

_Didn't you once tell me having to hear straight people talk about having sex was the on the list of top five worst forms of torture you could imagine?_

**_yes under normal circumstances_**

**_but this is YOU and POTTER_**

**_i am HIGHLY INVESTED in this shit_**

_Ugh, fine._

_It was incredible._

_Like, quite-possibly-best-sex-of-my-life incredible._

**_oh my god_**

**_wait_**

**_so what's the problem then?_**

**_it made you realise you want to keep hooking up with him after the bet ends?_**

_Worse._

_It made me realise that I miiiiiiiight have feelings for him._

**_a;jfhaghalfga;fh_**

_And then we went to the mountains with Black and Lupin and I've spent so much time with him this weekend and now I DEFINITELY have feelings for him._

**_ASDHFA;OIGHALDSGAHRL_**

**_holy fuck_**

**_i can't believe it_**

_Do you see my problem now?_

**_i see no problem with any of this_**

_... _

_Marlene._

**_ok ok fine, i see how all of this can be a little complicated_**

_A "LITTLE" complicated?_

_Marls_

_I have a major crush on a boy who's going to dump me in five days._

_And I'm ~supposed~ to be making him WANT to dump me._

_That is MASSIVELY fucking complicated._

**_ok first of all, james is not going to dump you in five days_**

**_i understand that you have a lot riding on this - namely peter's weird ass cheese platter and your dignity_**

**_and i understand that i'm meant to be neutral on this whole bet between you and mary_**

**_but honey_**

**_that boy is SO GONE on you_**

_Is he though?_

_We were having a moment last night while I was at Six-Drink Lily, and then all of a sudden something changed and he wanted nothing to do with me._

**_hmm yeah that's a little out-of-character for him_**

**_isn't 6 drink lily the overly sexual one?_**

_No, that's Seven._

_Six is dancing._

**_ah, she's a fun one to go clubbing with_**

_But that's beside the point._

_Anyways, that happened but this morning he was acting like it never did? And then asked me if we were actually dating or what was going on between us?_

**_wait omg_**

**_what did you say_**

_I panicked and said yes?_

**_HOLY FUCK_**

**_LILY_**

**_THIS IS INCREDIBLE_**

**_and also fucking hilarious_**

**_literally you were supposed to be turning potter off of you and instead you managed to fuck him, officially start dating him, and fall for him yourself_**

**_this is quite possibly the single biggest failure in the history of failures_**

Were it not for the fact that she's still in a car with James, Remus, and Sirius, Lily would definitely audibly groan at Marlene's comment - because it's _so _true and god, it's _so _fucked up. But as it stands, she'd prefer for none of them to ask too many questions about who she's texting and what it's about, so she bites her tongue.

_You're telling me._

_But seriously, I need your help._

_Nothing I've seemed to do has actually pushed James away like I thought it would._

**_because he's head over heels for you, something literally everyone but you recognizes, go on_**

_Well, what do I do now?_

**_accept the truth, forfeit the bet, and go fuck his brains out?_**

_Marlene._

**_LILY._**

_I can't lose this bet._

_My goddamn pride is at stake._

**_you're being ridiculous _**

_Am I?_

_I don't lose._

_I just need to… I don't know, find a way to somehow win the bet but then get him back?_

_Just like, do enough that he doesn't want to be with me by Friday but not enough that he won't accept a profuse apology and give me a second chance in a few months or so._

**_this… seems like a bad idea_**

**_also wasn't the whole point of the bet that you weren't going to go out of your way at all?_**

_And I'm not going to._

_Well, not that much._

_I just need to, I don't know, get on his nerves a little?_

**_i could tell you all the reasons i think this is dumb_**

**_but i know you_**

**_and i know you won't listen to me because you're stubbornly set on winning_**

**_so fine_**

**_what do you need help with?_**

_What's the most annoying thing about me?_

**_OTHER than the fact that you're too fucking competitive for your own good?_**

_Yes other than that_

_He apparently finds that hot._

**_of fucking course he does_**

**_i don't know_**

**_you get nerdy about things nobody else really cares about and won't shut up even if people are literally yawning_**

**_you can be SUPER intense out of nowhere_**

**_you set a bunch of weirdly specific rules for yourself that make no sense_**

**_and refuse to budge on them even when they're actually absurd_**

_Wow_

_Ok calm down there._

**_what else are best friends for if not keeping a comprehensive list of your character flaws?_**

_I don't know, unconditional support maybe?_

**_honey, i'm not going to unconditionally support your stupidity_**

_I'm NOT being stupid._

**_yes you are_**

**_but i've helped you anyways_**

**_you should be thanking me_**

_It feels weird to thank you for telling me all the ways I suck._

**_yeah, well, it also feels weird to be trying to help you lose a guy who you've just openly admitted you ACTUALLY LIKE_**

_You've already pointed out that I've got a compulsive need to win everything._

**_yeah, well this seems like one situation where you should give that up_**

From the front seat, Sirius laughs. "Evans, you're literally scowling at your phone - who managed to piss you off like ten minutes into having cell service again?"

"Marlene's insulting me," she answers, because, well, it's _not _a lie. Although the circumstances that resulted in said insults are significantly more incriminating.

He laughs even louder this time. "Classic McKinnon."

**_holy fuck_**

**_wait shit wrong number_**

… _You're definitely gossiping about me with someone, aren't you?_

**_of course_**

**_don't worry dear, it's only dorcas_**

**_she lives for our office drama, her accounting firm is boring as fuck in comparison_**

_That checks out, lol._

Marlene takes a while to get back to her after that (no doubt relaying the whole story to her wife), James is asleep against the car window, and Sirius is still tapping away on his phone screen, so she turns to Remus, starting a casual conversation about work that will hopefully take her mind off of her text message history.

She needs to think up a plan to get out of this mess in one piece, but she knows it won't happen in this car, and a distraction is the next-best solution for now.

* * *

When they get back into the city and the car parks outside her building, Lily feels something heavy settle in her stomach. After a whole car ride of convincing herself that she needs space to think logically, she finds that she actually kind of dreads leaving. She's gotten accustomed to James' fingers interlaced with her own, and feels somewhat bereft without them.

But Remus' car is parked out in front of her place and she's expected to leave now - ideally before someone else turns onto the street and starts violently honking to display their displeasure at Remus stopping in the middle of the road, because New York drivers don't exactly take kindly to pointless delays - so she unbuckles her seatbelt and addresses the two boys up front.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she tells them, before turning back to James.

At the soft look in his eyes, she's hit with yet another wave of affection for him - god, she's truly pathetic, isn't she? - and she has to fight back the urge to just grab him by the hand again, and to not let go until she's successfully dragged him all the way up to her apartment.

But she can't do that - not only because he _does _need to get back to his own place since they've got work tomorrow, but also because she needs a chance to get her master plan going, and she sure as hell can't seem to think properly about winning the bet with him around.

So she settles herself for a swift peck on his lips, and a soft, "Bye."

And then, before she can do anything stupid, she forces herself out of the car, taking her bag with her.

As Remus' car drives away and Lily walks up to her apartment, the air feels colder somehow. Not temperature-wise, because it's summertime and it's definitely warm outside, but she's had a constant heat source near her for the past… honestly, the past forty-eight hours, and now she's alone again.

The sudden sense of loneliness is strange, and Lily muses on it as she turns her key in the lock. She's never really been the type of person to constantly need company, and _especially _not from the same person. Even in most of her past relationships, even in that new-beginnings honeymoon phase, there was a strict upper limit to how much time she could spend with a guy before needing to retreat to solitude.

So what's so different this time? Why is James so contradictory to that pattern?

Lily doesn't let herself answer that question. She's quite sure she wouldn't like the result if she let herself dwell on it for too long. She's fallen too hard, too soon.

But distance is good. Without the cheeky smirks that make her heart stutter, the gentle touches on her waist and hands and cheek that make her breath catch in her throat, the sweet comments that make her melt, her mind is much clearer. Her rational brain is at the helm again, and every other part of her bows to its logic instead of going off script.

It's almost dinnertime, so she places a delivery order and starts planning out her week - both in the filling-in-her-planner sense _and_ in the building-a-foolproof-solution-to-this-bet sense. The former ends up being much simpler than the latter.

She can't break any of Mary's rules - the terms of this bet _were _that James would ditch her purely for her own character flaws - but as Marlene noted, Lily has plenty of flaws that she can use to her advantage. She's a shit girlfriend - something she's been told in the past - and while she definitely wants to be a better one for James at some point, she can put that self-improvement aside for just a few more days.

By the end of the evening, she's got an empty container of shrimp fried rice and a relatively solid course of action. This is all going to go just fine - James will get annoyed with her by Wednesday, suggest a break by Friday, and then, in a few weeks, when Lily's at a new job and Mary's already had to stomach defeat _and _one of Peter's cheese platters, she'll show up at his door with a bottle of wine and an apology, and all will be as it should.

She just can't float by on her feelings anymore, can't let her heart override everything the moment he gets too close, not if she wants a chance at this working. Her plan is only foolproof if she can stop acting like a damn fool.


	7. am

DAY SIX

* * *

Nobody likes Monday mornings. Even James, who is by all accounts a pretty positive person and who actually likes his job, is less-than-pleased to be walking into the precinct at 8:56 a.m. He'd much rather be asleep in his bed right now - preferably, with his girlfriend in it with him.

He's still very surprised he's calling her that.

He hadn't really _meant_ to freak out at breakfast yesterday, but the results had been... more than satisfactory. The fact that she apparently wants him as much as he wants her - or maybe not _quite _as much, because James is a lovesick sod, but _close_ \- is the best news he could've asked for.

Even Sirius begrudgingly admitted on the way home from dropping Lily off that it looked like James was doing far better than expected. But he'd also reminded James of the _exact _terms of their bet, which… even now, even with all the progress he's made, he's still got his work cut out for him when it comes to Lily.

The clock strikes nine, and James immediately realises that the very woman he's thinking about is still nowhere to be found. Which is incredibly bizarre, because she's _never _late.

And suddenly, Monday morning just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

"Attention everyone," he says loudly, standing up from his desk and getting the attention of everyone in the pit. "Lily Evans is officially late for work. Which calls for a game - who can guess why she's running late?"

"Why does this need to be a game?" Remus asks, and James is almost offended by the absurdity of his suggestion. "Why couldn't she just have overslept like a normal person?"

"Because this is Lily we're talking about," Mary replies, giving Remus a very healthy and well-deserved dose of side eye. "The girl hasn't been late once since she started working here, and she's got like five alarms set to go off each morning."

"See, in any other case," Sirius begins, and the devious glint in his eyes suggests that whatever he's going to say next is going to embarrass James somehow, "my guess would be that she entirely lost track of time because she was too busy being _ravaged _by her new boyfriend, but given that her boyfriend is standing right here, it can't be that one. Not to mention that I'm honestly not sure he's capable of ravaging anyone."

James gets distracted from formulating any sort of comeback by the sound of Marlene snorting into her coffee. Which invokes something entirely different from the need to refute Sirius, because _oh god what has Lily told her?_

"I'm going to stick a pin in that boyfriend comment," Mary says, "because we're _definitely _going to come back to that at some point, but back to the topic at hand: my guess is that she got hit by a kid on one of those dumb electric scooters."

"Absolutely not," Marlene argues. "Do you remember the time she showed up to work with a sprained ankle from stepping off the sidewalk wrong? Unless she was literally being dragged to the ER, there's no way she'd be running late because of _that. _It would've had to at _least_ been a car."

James cringes at that, because he doesn't really enjoy the mental image of Lily getting hit by a car.

"Personally, I think she's been abducted by aliens," Peter says, sounding far too reasonable for the absurdity of his proposal. "It's the only thing that makes sense here."

"I wasn't aware there was any reported UFO activity in Brooklyn recently."

Everyone - James included - jumps at the sound of Dumbledore's voice. When the hell did he come out of his office?

"We're trying to guess why Lily's running late, sir," Mary informs him. "_Some_ guesses" - she pauses to look in Peter's direction meaningfully - "have been significantly stupider than others."

"I'll join in on the fun," Dumbledore says jovially - or at least, as jovially as his completely inexpressive demeanor allows. "Hmm, she ran out of tea at home and got stuck in a long line at the coffee shop."

"Once again, nowhere near dramatic enough to be the truth," James replies. "God, you and Remus both are _really _bad at this."

Dumbledore gives him a challenging look - James has quite clearly managed to awaken the captain's hidden competitive nature. "What's your guess then, if yours is so much more likely?"

James actually hasn't come up with anything yet, but he's saved from answering Dumbledore by the dinging of the elevator, and a frantic Lily running out.

"Evans! Where were you, we were worried sick!" Sirius cries dramatically.

She stops in her tracks to look at him, head cocked in confusion. "I'm only three minutes late."

"And we're all very disappointed in you," James says, delighting in the way she immediately rounds on him and then apparently has to take a moment to collect herself.

"But there's a more important matter at hand here," Marlene chimes in. "_Why _were you three minutes late?"

Lily raises her left hand in mock-surrender, and that's when James notices that she's holding something in her right hand - _goddammit_. "I ran out of tea and had to grab some on the way in," she defends. "The line was longer than expected."

"_Fuck yes_!" Dumbledore exclaims, entirely out-of-character for his normally calm demeanour, then turns on his heel and goes back into his office.

And Lily, who was already bewildered before the captain's outburst, looks completely lost now. When she speaks, it's slow and quiet. "Can someone please explain what the hell just happened here?"

"Nothing important," Sirius answers with a wave. "The Captain just has bragging rights on the rest of us for a while."

"And we still have no conclusive evidence that aliens exist," Peter adds, and it's apparently the absurdity of that statement that makes Lily decide she doesn't actually want to prod any further.

She shakes her head and walks over to her desk, brushing by James as she does so.

"Alright, Evans?" he says to her, grinning.

But instead of the smiles and flirtatious glances he's gotten accustomed to over the past few days, her response is a curt nod. "Potter," she replies flatly, professionally.

He's not sure if the betting game of the morning has gotten to her and pissed her off, or what it is that's warranted a much colder response than normal, but he decides not to push it.

So instead, he turns his focus to his work, where he's only just managed to find some information on a Lestrange by the name of Rabastan. It's fascinating stuff - horrifying, yes, because it seems bloodthirst is a family trait, but _fascinating _nonetheless.

He's not sure how long he's there, reading through old files and case notes, when there's a tap on his shoulder.

"Potter." It's the same flat tone from before, from the same person. James turns to face his girlfriend, who, if he says so himself, isn't acting all that girlfriend-ish at the moment. "I've got to go check our perp's briefcase in the evidence lockers - care to come with?"

"Sure," he replies, trying to keep his tone relatively calm and not at all indicative of what's going through his head right now. He's definitely not overanalysing her every move, nope, not at all.

The walk to the evidence lockers is uncharacteristically quiet for the two of them.

It's only when they've checked out the necessary key and walked into the empty rows of lockers that Lily turns to face him. "I've been thinking about it - we need to set up some ground rules."

He raises his eyebrows at her. "Ground rules?"

"For this," she replies, gesturing vaguely between the two of them. "Us. We may have our relationship status sorted out, but I don't want us to be a 'couple' at work. I don't want to be 'Detective Potter's girlfriend.' "

James is about to point out that there is hardly a situation in which _James _would be the person named - it's far more likely, given her status and ambition, that he'd be referred to as 'Sergeant Evans's boyfriend' instead of the other way around, but he lets her finish her train of thought instead of vocalising that.

"We need to keep our personal and professional relationships completely siloed. At the very least, until I change precincts and I'm no longer dating a colleague," she says.

James wants to tell her that's ridiculous, because _god_, when has _anybody _in this precinct managed to keep their personal lives out of the workplace? They all know everything about everybody's lives - even Dumbledore's. Hell, the only person whose personal life is still a bit of a mystery is Mary, and that's mostly because she tends to threaten violence any time anyone starts to pry too much.

But instead, he nods. He knows Lily's career means the most to her, and that she'd probably toss their fledgling relationship right out the window if she felt like she was being forced to choose between the two, so James decides to let this one slide.

Maybe, if he wasn't trying to win a bet in which she's expected to be in _love _with him four days from now, he'd push back a little bit more, argue with her a bit in an attempt to get her to see sense and to see that this rule of hers is destined for failure.

(Sirius had quoted the terms of the bet back at him yesterday afternoon, and apparently the full thing he'd agreed to is that Lily's meant to be in _love_ with him by Friday. Which is an _incredibly_ tall order given that their relationship started five days ago. Curse his drunken overconfidence.)

And as such, there's no room for missteps or even slight disagreements. James has to be the _perfect _boyfriend between now and then.

"Okay, that makes sense," he lies easily.

Lily looks at him, a bit wide-eyed and clearly expecting more resistance. "It does?"

"Yeah, I mean, it's natural to want to keep work things out of personal things, right? Even Dumbledore said that last week," he shrugs, working to convince himself just as much as her. "I mean, he was technically just talking about drama rather than, you know, literally _everything_ about being together, but I… uh, yeah, we can expand it to that."

He's well aware that the more he rambles, the less convinced he sounds, so he decides to shut up at that.

"Okay, well, good," Lily says slowly.

"Are there any other rules?"

Lily bites her lip. "I wonder if… maybe we rushed into things too quickly? Like, we had sex on the second date, and I… normally I hate doing that."

Is she suggesting what he thinks she's suggesting?

"I just, maybe we should hold off for a little bit? On the sex stuff?"

By no means is he with Lily just for the sake of fucking her, but… god, that was a _very _pleasant experience, and one he'd been looking forward to repeating at some point in the near future.

He's hit with a sudden wave of insecurity. "Was it bad?"

He regrets the words as soon as they're out of his mouth, he _knows _the sex wasn't bad, he'd watched her come twice, and he's heard her tell Marlene once before that she refuses to fake an orgasm.

"No, not at all," she shakes her head vigorously. "It was good. Like, it's scary how good it was. Don't… please don't think that. I just, I want us to do this properly."

James once again has to bite his tongue, this time for a whole number of reasons. The first being… fuck, _she _was the one who made a move on him that night to begin with. It's strange that she'd do that and then suddenly act like it was a mistake - he'd never say that aloud though, because she's allowed to change her mind about things like that whenever she wants, but still, something seems off about it.

And then there's the fact that Lily has never once given a damn about what's deemed 'proper' in a relationship. It's very telling of just how many of Lily's conversations he's casually eavesdropped on (in his defense, she's in the desk next to him, it's harder _not _to eavesdrop honestly) that he knows _many_ of her opinions on the matter.

Why does she suddenly care so much about that now?

He's not going to argue with her though, he reminds himself. He's going to be the perfect boyfriend and acquiesce to her wishes, regardless of how much he may inwardly want to question them.

"That's fair," is what he eventually responds with.

But instead of being pleased with his agreement, Lily looks… well, not pleased. For starters, she won't even look him in the eye. "Good, then. I'm glad we established that."

"Me too," he says, nodding and suddenly feeling incredibly awkward. He has, very frequently, felt like a bit of an idiot around Lily, but this sort of weirdness is something else entirely. He doesn't really know what to do with it.

So instead of addressing the sudden unnamed elephant in the room, he changes the subject entirely. "So did you actually need anything out of the evidence locker, or was this just an excuse to talk?"

She jumps into action at that. "Oh! Yes! There was supposedly a logo on the inside of the case that Evidence claims is remarkably similar to a tattoo they've seen on a bunch of former inmates, so I wanted to come see it for myself. It should help us start to pull a viable list of potential connections to Lestrange."

"Great," he says, feeling the tension drop from his shoulders. This, unlike their prior tension-filled conversation, is something he's more than happy to dig into. "Let's check it out."

She gets the key into the lock before turning back to James, an unreadable expression on her face. "Thank you, by the way," she tells him, "for agreeing to the rules."

"Anything for you, Evans."

Because really, he _would _do anything for her.

* * *

When James comes back from lunch, he's a little surprised to see Marlene sitting atop his desk, typing something out on her phone.

"Er, McKinnon?" he says, standing a few feet from his desk and hoping she'll take his standing there as a cue to perhaps get off his workspace.

She does nothing of the sort, and simply looks up at him from her phone with a blank expression. "How can I help you?"

"By getting off my desk, maybe?"

She salutes him, but makes no attempt to move. "No can do, Potter."

"Can you at least explain _why _you're sitting on my desk then, perhaps?" Really, she owes him at least that much.

"That I can do. You probably don't have plans on Wednesday, but if you do, cancel them."

He wants to be offended by her assumption that he doesn't have plans, but it's correct, so he doesn't have much ground to stand on. "Why?"

"I've decided that we're all going out for karaoke as a precinct," she tells him. "Everyone else has already accepted the calendar invite, but since you don't seem to check your email during lunch like all these other work-obsessed duds, I figured I'd extend your invitation in person."

James doesn't have anything _against _karaoke per say, but… "Why?"

"Are you asking why I'm inviting you in person? Because I already explained that. Or is the question 'why karaoke' in general?"

"The second one," he answers, sitting in his desk chair and hoping that maybe Marlene will pick up on the cue to maybe get up off the mess of papers and case files on his desk. He's in no rush to get back to work, but at least having the _option _would be nice.

"Oh," she says casually, "I'm finishing up the slideshow for Lily's leaving party on Friday night and decided we need one last batch of comedic footage of everyone to really round it out."

"So you're planning a karaoke night so that you can film it and make fun of us two days later?" he repeats back to her.

"I mean, it won't be _me _specifically making fun of everyone. Everyone's going to be making fun of everyone - and that includes me, because I can't sing for shit."

He laughs at that. "Okay, McKinnon, you got me. I'm in."

She claps her hands together - or, claps them as best she can with her phone still in her right hand. "Perfect! Now the only person left to convince is Dumble-diddy."

_Dumble-diddy_. Truly, he swears Marlene's nicknames for Dumbledore get worse every time.

Luckily for him, his confirmation is somehow the magic words to get her off of his desk. She uncrosses her legs and jumps down to the floor, before immediately getting immersed in the notification that just popped up on her phone as she walks away.

Sure enough, there _is _a calendar invite in his inbox from Marlene - honestly, why she couldn't have just waited until he sat down at his desk and opened his email instead of briefly taking up residence on his desk…

He's given up trying to understand Marlene. She's even harder to decipher than Lily.

As is his usual ritual, he fucks around for the first hour or so after lunch. He's in the middle of some random online game he found that involves chasing ducks when an email comes in flagged as urgent.

He declines to open it immediately - nothing is more urgent than scaring all of these ducks off of his internet pond - but quickly learns that it's not the best of news when nearly everyone in the office audibly groans.

That's enough to get him to pause his game, and he clicks into the unread email.

_From: Albus Dumbledore_

_To: 73rd Precinct - ALL_

_Subject: Teambuilding Training_

_Team:_

_The Commissioner's Office has just informed me that we are overdue on our annual teambuilding training. As such, they're sending a trainer to the precinct tomorrow at 10 a.m. to complete the training. Headquarters says to plan on it lasting six hours._

_Please work to finish any urgent assignments before COB today; otherwise, cases may need to be shuffled to other precincts and/or escalated to Major Crimes._

_Thank you for your cooperation. _

_Captain Dumbledore_

"Well fuck, there goes our _entire _Tuesday," Remus complains, while Sirius throws a paper ball across the room, purposefully missing the trash can by a wide margin as a means of showing his own disapproval.

(Peter will inevitably walk over and pick it up in approximately thirty seconds.)

"As such, I highly recommend you get to work and cease any messing around," Dumbledore says from his doorway, having clearly anticipated the fuss his email would cause. "Namely, those of you working on particularly high-stakes cases who are currently attempting to scatter cartoon geese in an online game _clearly _designed for schoolchildren."

There's a very long silence across the pit.

"Ducks," James mutters under his breath. "They're ducks."

He feels Lily's eyes on him, and instantly realises that she's heard him.

Dumbledore goes back into his own office, Peter gets up and throws Sirius' paper ball in the trash can, and everyone quickly returns to their own work, with just a little bit more urgency than before.

"Ducks," Lily says plainly, after a few minutes.

"I was shooing them out of my koi pond," he replies, very matter-of-factly. "Very important work, obviously."

"Mmhmm," she hums, somehow communicating a hefty dose of sarcasm in that nonverbal response alone. "Well, once you've finished that _very important work_, maybe you'll have thoughts on some of the other _very important work_ we've got at the moment - namely, building a plan to track down Lestrange?"

"Shit, yeah, I do have thoughts on that," he replies, pulling up some of the files he'd been working through before taking lunch.

They start talking through some of the recently released inmates - Avery, Goyle, and Rosier are some of the names that pop up, most of them arrested for drug offenses or assault. But most notably on their list is Lucius Malfoy, a hedge fund manager who was caught laundering millions of dollars a few years back. All of them bear the same identifying tattoo as the snake in Crouch's briefcase lining.

The thing is, doing the research required to figure out how all these individuals are related - and more importantly, how they might be related to Lestrange and whether or not they've still got contact with her - is going to take a _lot _of time. Questioning Crouch again is an option - and it's something they decide to do before the end of the day, but the prospect of losing a whole day of investigation is going to set them back pretty damn far.

"God, there's no way we're going to be able to get through this list of potential suspects by the end of today," James says, banging his head into the desk. "I swear to god, if this teambuilding training is the reason this case gets Vultured from us, I will riot."

"Snape can have this case over my dead body," Lily replies immediately.

"Surely you've got a plan to get us in a good place with this that _doesn't _involve you dying for it, yeah?

She takes a second to think on that. "We could… work through it tonight?" she suggests. "Not here, obviously, because the night shift people are weird as fuck, but at my place?"

"Really?" He's not surprised by her suggesting taking her work home, but he _is _surprised by her inviting him to her place to do work. That seems like some violation of her ground rules.

"Yeah, we can make a thing of it," she nods. "Order pizza and all that. It'd practically be a date... just with more work involved."

Is he obligated to point out to her that this is possibly against the rules? They're _her _rules though, and James is only going along with them for her sake, so if _she _doesn't see anything wrong with this arrangement

Or fuck, what if this is a test, and she _wants _him to point out that this is against their rules?

He's going to give himself a headache.

So he goes with his gut - working on this case in the evening makes sense, weird rules about isolating their at-work and off-work relationships aside. And goddammit, he wasn't joking about rioting if Major Crimes takes this from them before they get their shot at solving it.

"Yeah, sure, that sounds perfect," is what he eventually responds with.

The fact that he's still second-guessing everything with Lily even _after _they've defined their relationship is kind of unsettling to him. He really figured he'd be a bit more confident about where they stand now that they know what they are to each other, but everything that's happened today has him completely unable to figure out where she stands on things all over again.

Maybe he's just doomed to perpetually overthink _everything _when it comes to her.

If that's the case, then… _fuck_.

Lily doesn't seem to think anything of his response though, just grins at him. "Perfect."

And then she's back to pure business mode, and they're both pulling as much information as they can to find any links possible between any of the released prisoners and Bellatrix Lestrange.

* * *

Lily's apartment is a lot like her. At least, that's James' first thought when he walks in.

It's very minimally decorated, and absolutely spotless. The only real elements of homeliness come from pictures hung on the wall, and even those are all perfectly framed, instead of held up with scotch tape like many of his own are.

She's also got a whole array of plants around the space, and James is mildly impressed by that, because he can't even keep a cactus alive.

(He's found it's much easier to keep something alive when it incessantly meows at you or jumps on your face when it's hungry, which is why Godric has thus far avoided going the same way as his cacti collection.)

"The pizza should be here in ten minutes of so," Lily says, sitting on the couch on one side, pulling her feet up underneath her. Since leaving the precinct, she's changed into a tank top and leggings, and James is doing his level best not to eye the way that both of those things hug her body like a glove.

Separation of personal and professional, he reminds himself.

"Great," he replies, letting his bag fall to the floor as he sits on the opposite side. "I've got the recording from Crouch's questioning in here, just in case we wanted to give that another listen."

She nods. "Yeah, that'd probably be a good starting point - he said a _lot_, and I want to make sure we didn't miss anything."

He reaches into his bag to pull out the tape recorder, but before he can get it started, her doorbell rings.

"Oh!" she jumps up. "That'd be the pizza. I'll go grab that and be right back."

While Lily's getting the pizza, James takes in her living room. Namely, the pictures on her wall. He recognises some of the people in them - Mary, Marlene, and Marlene's wife Dorcas all appear on more than one occasion - but the rest as a bit of a mystery to him. There are a couple that look like family photos, featuring a woman with hair just like Lily's, a man with her same smile, and another girl who doesn't even look the faintest bit like Lily. He's fascinated by that, by this sudden peek into parts of her life he hasn't seen before.

He's too busy looking at pictures that he doesn't even notice Lily coming back into the room. "What are you looking at?"

"I didn't know you had a sister," he says, not really thinking things through before he says them. For fuck's sake, the other girl in those family photos could be a cousin or a friend for all he knows, why is he just automatically assuming it's some secret sister?

But despite his initial regret, it turns out that he's right. "I don't really talk about Petunia much," she says quietly, setting the pizza down on the table in front of them. "We're… very different people, and we don't exactly talk to each other much at all anymore."

"Oh?" is the very eloquent response he comes up with.

Lily laughs under her breath, a soft thing with some heavy tones of bitterness. "Tuney and I have some pretty strong difference of opinion about life ambitions, as well you know, basic human rights."

"Oh," he repeats, and curses his brain for not being able to come up with anything better than that.

"We were best friends when we were younger, but we just kept growing apart the older we got," Lily replies, looking at the same picture James had been studying. "Eventually… it just became irreconcilable."

She shakes her head, suddenly back in the moment and looking at him again. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I just dumped all that on you. You didn't come over here to listen to my emotional baggage."

That's somehow the thing that gets his words flowing again. "No, no," he shakes his head. "I'm fine with you talking about that stuff with me - hell, I'm _more_ than fine with it. You can dump whatever emotional baggage you want on me."

She looks at him oddly.

"You're my girlfriend," he explains. "I want to know everything there is to know about you - that includes the good _and_ the bad."

She opens and closes her mouth a few times. "I… "

It seems that he's managed to strike _Lily _speechless this time. That's certainly a turning of the tables.

She sits there, looking at him for a little longer, before she finally manages a response. It's nothing more than a simple "thank you," but the wondrous sort of way she's looking at him makes his heart swell.

He's sorely tempted to lean over and kiss her, but he hangs onto his last little bit of self-control the only way he can think of - by turning his attention back to what they're really meant to be doing here.

"Right, so, dinner first, then we can dig into research?"

She looks back towards the pizza. "Oh, yeah," she replies, like she'd almost forgotten why he came over for the briefest of moments. "I'll go grab plates and napkins."

"It's _pizza_, Evans," he replies. It's a handheld food that's literally sitting in front of them in a cardboard box - they don't need a proper set-up for that.

She raises a challenging eyebrow at him as she stands up. "Your point?"

"Why do we need plates when it goes straight from the box into my mouth?"

"Because this is a white couch, and if you get pizza sauce or grease on it, I will _end _you, that's why," she replies, far too sweetly for the fact that she's issuing a death threat related to her furniture. But she leans over and kisses him on the cheek before walking out of the room, which softens the weight of the threat even further.

She comes back a few moments later with plates and napkins, and even though he thinks the entire process is entirely unnecessary, he transfers the pizza to a plate before bringing it to his mouth.

Lily's watching as he does so, and she nods approvingly. "See, that wasn't so hard, now was it?"

There's something _so _absurd about it, about her weird stubbornness on this particular thing, that he can't help but find entertaining. Unlike the 'relationship rules' she set up earlier today that are still kind of confusing the shit out of him, this is the kind of fixation that he finds adorable for some reason.

"You're ridiculous."

She shrugs, looking away from him. "Yeah, maybe."

"It's cute," he adds, just to ensure she doesn't take it the wrong way.

Her eyes dart back to him and there's half a second where he thinks she's going to refute that, but then she's grabbing her own slice of pizza and the moment is over.

"So," she says, as soon as she swallows her first bite, "did you find anything else interesting today?"

"I mean, I don't know how useful this is," James replies, "but pretty much all the perps with those snake tattoos were bailed out, like… ridiculously fast after their initial arrest. And by an anonymous source every time."

Lily's eyebrows furrow. "That's… odd."

"Yeah, I mean… it sounds like they all might've had the same person bailing all of them out? Some weird little loyalty group?"

"I wonder why no one's done the same for Crouch."

James snorts. "Something makes me think he's not considered one of their… particularly _useful _members."

"What gave you that impression?" Lily asks, with a ghost of a smile. "The fact that he immediately spilled everything he knew, or the weird tongue thing?"

"_You noticed that too?_"

She laughs. "Literally how could I miss it? He looked fucking _deranged_."

"It was… really something, that's for sure."

She changes the subject abruptly. "Did you ever find out if the Bellatrix we're tracking is the same one that's related to Sirius?"

Shit, he'd been meaning to try and figure that one out. But also, he thinks that maybe subconsciously he doesn't _want _to know, because _fuck, _Sirius's family is already pretty goddamn fucked as it is, and adding on the fact that his cousin is potentially a professional hitwoman is… good god.

And inevitably _he'll _be the one that would have to tell Sirius about it, because it's really only fair that Sirius get _some_ sort of heads up that his cousin is a wanted criminal and that his best friend is the one responsible for tracking her down before she's being brought in, and that just doesn't sound like a very fun conversation to have.

"Not yet," James admits. "Did you find any more info on that drop-off site?"

"Nope. As far as I can tell, it's not been a big hub of criminal activity before this."

They keep going like that, talking around and around about case facts and setting up potential leads and places to visit and listening to Crouch's questioning again and generally just trying to get a reasonable plan of action together, when suddenly, James remembers something.

"Evans!" he says, practically bouncing in his seat as he looks up from the papers in his hand to the woman on the other side of the couch. "Witness Protection found Alice and Frank, yeah?"

She nods.

"I wonder if _they've _got any information - I mean, if Lestrange was getting paid to take them out, surely they know something?"

Lily's eyes light up. "Oh my god, yes, you're right. I'm pretty sure they're both still in New York at the moment while Witness Protection gets all their new documents together, we can for sure see what they know."

"Perfect," James replies.

After a few hours, the pizza is completely gone and they've more or less completely finished off all necessary work discussions, but James has no plans of getting up from the couch soon.

Although really, that is at least in part due to the fact that Lily's legs are thrown across his lap now, so he's more or less trapped here because of her.

And he doesn't mind that one bit.

"I wonder what it's going to be like, being thrown into a whole new precinct and just suddenly being in charge of all these people I've never met," Lily comments absentmindedly. "I'm excited, but it's still weird, you know?"

"Yeah," James nods. He honestly can't imagine working in a different precinct than the 73rd - there are so many wonderful little quirks about the place, not to mention that it's full of some of his closest friends. "But I mean, Dumbledore did it - he came into our precinct without having met any of us before and he's made it work somehow. I mean, goddamn, he's technically the newest person here, and I literally can't even imagine the place without him now. I'm sure it'll be exactly like that for you in your new place - it'll take time, but eventually they'll all realise you're a pretty damn awesome person to work under."

"How would you know what it's like to work under me?" she asks. "We've only ever been on the same level since we both started here."

He smirks at her - his response is definitely going to earn him an eye roll or something, but she's set him up too well to pass up. "I mean, if we're only counting the precinct, sure. But I've been under you on other occasions besides that, and those were… quite enjoyable."

She reaches over and shoves him good-naturedly. "That was _not _the topic of conversation. And I'm not exactly going to be fucking any of my subordinates."

"Well, I should hope not. That'd be pretty rude of you, to just replace me with a younger sidepiece as soon as you change precincts."

"Nah, I'm already cradle-snatching too much with you."

"I'm only two months younger than you, Evans," he retorts.

"Exactly," she grins. "Cradle-snatching, for sure."

She's definitely closer to him now than she was before. Without thinking about it, he grabs the hand that's resting on her knee, lacing his fingers with his own. Her hands are significantly smaller than his, porcelain white and incredibly soft whereas his are tanned and definitely more than a little calloused. And despite all those differences, they just… fit together.

These are his favourite sorts of moments - he's not questioning anything about his relationship with Lily, and everything just feels so damn natural and _right_. It's like everything that happened this morning and all the uncertainties of their situation have sunk away as the sun set, and now, everything's as it should be.

He knows there's a chance that the doubts in his head will come back in the morning, and he'll have to figure all of this out all over again, but for now, he's pretty damn content with how things are.

And seemingly, so is Lily, who moves even closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Stay over?" she asks, her voice soft as the hand not holding his begins to delicately run through the hair at the nape of his neck.

He doesn't second-guess his answer for a second.


	8. this means war

_DAY SEVEN_

* * *

The next morning, James is the one skidding into the office ten minutes late, though it hardly brings about anywhere near the amount of fanfare that Lily's late arrival brought on yesterday.

In his defense, he woke up in an apartment that wasn't his and had to run back to his own place to get his clothes and all that shit. It's not like he just overslept on his normal morning routine.

Lily looks notably different than when he'd kissed her goodbye this morning - messy bedhead replaced with a sleek ponytail, dressed in a cop uniform instead of an oversized pajama set. And as such, their relationship has switched lanes yet again. She greets him with a smile and a nod rather than a kiss.

"You got here just in time," she tells him, "you almost missed the start of the teambuilding session."

"Oh, and that would've been just awful," he replies sarcastically.

"We would've all been so bonded without you. You would've just been the outsider of the precinct forevermore." She stands up from her seat, obviously planning on getting to the conference room before anyone else so that she can get the best seat.

"Ah, yes, because we all know teambuilding sessions are the _only _way anyone in this office is capable of bonding with anyone else." He drains the last bit of coffee out of his travel mug, leaving it on his desk and following suit.

He takes a seat next to her, at the front of the room. Honestly, he really thinks he's sat at the front of this conference room more in the past two weeks than he has during his entire time working here combined.

Lily's a good influence on him, and somehow, he doesn't seem to mind that.

As it turns out, the whole precinct gets into the conference room before the teambuilding organiser even arrives, and so Peter takes it upon himself to go up to the front of the room, clapping his hands together excitedly.

"Who's ready to get their team _built?!_"

He's basically the only person in the precinct actually excited by the concept of spending a whole day doing teambuilding exercises, so his excited questioning is met only by blank stares and a few half-assed cheers.

"Oh come _on_, guys," he says. "We're going to be so much better off after this! Nothing like a few good trust falls to really enforce that team unity!"

"If anyone tries to trust fall on me I'm letting them hit the ground," Mary replies dryly, not even looking up from picking black polish off her nails.

Somehow, James is inclined to believe she's telling the truth on that one.

"We're already plenty unified," Lily tells Peter. "This is the stupidest training we've had yet - I mean, there's not even anything I can put into a binder!"

James has to duck his head to hide the laugh threatening to bubble out of his chest - the simple fact of the matter is that, for some reason, whenever Lily makes some sort of incredibly nerdy comment about binders or paperwork or anything of the sort, it sets off a new wave of affection towards her.

It doesn't make any sense, but then again, when has what he's felt for Lily _ever _made sense?

"Life lessons don't need binders! I'm sure you'll change your mind by the end of today's session," Peter replies, still as buoyant as ever. He _really_ fucking loves teambuilding days.

"Thank you for those… inspiring words." A new cop - someone James has never seen before in all his years at the NYPD - steps into the room. He looks quite bedraggled, his briefcase stuffed to the brim and threatening to tear at the zipper, but the most startling part of his appearance is the bright blue glass eye that is almost definitely staring directly at James.

"The name's Alastor Moody," he grunts, setting his briefcase down on the front table with a loud thud that makes Lily jump in her seat next to him. "Call me Mad-Eye. I'll be doing your mandatory teambuilding training today."

Honestly, when James pictures the type of person he'd expect to lead a teambuilding training, he expects one of those jumpy fresh-out-of-college type guys who clearly spent all four years as an RA, not a grizzly old man who looks like he just clawed his way out of a Brooklyn sewer.

"Building trust between colleagues is the foundation to a solid police force," he announces, pacing across the room. "If you can't trust your colleague to have your back while you're chasing down a perp, the entire operation is doomed. Every successful team is built upon communication, assurance, and _constant vigilance!_"

With those two words, Moody immediately turns and trust falls directly onto Peter, who only just manages to catch him without falling to the floor himself.

Once Peter hoists Moody upright again, the man turns to him and gives him a gruff nod - perhaps a gesture of approval, though a rather cryptic one. And then he just keeps on talking, like the thing he just did was totally normal and not at all an odd thing to do when in the middle of giving a presentation to a room full of police officers.

"I expect every single one of you to catch your colleagues when they fall - metaphorically _and _physically," he says to the room.

Mary scoffs audibly, but Moody doesn't seem to catch it - or if he does, he chooses not to comment.

"First off, you'll all be going through some activities to get to know yourselves - and then each other, better." Moody unzips his full-to-bursting briefcase, grabbing some slightly rumpled papers and passing them out haphazardly. Naturally, Lily somehow ends up with the only pristine one - everyone else's questionnaire is crumpled somehow.

"An imitation Enneagram test, really? Couldn't the company at least have bothered with the real thing?" Lily mutters under her breath, examining the paper thoroughly.

"Aren't those like… seventy questions long?"

Lily looks up at him, eyebrow raised. "Your point?"

Personality quizzes are like catnip to her. He forgot about that.

"Not everyone likes answering seventy questions about themselves, Evans," he says with a grin.

"It's valuable information for self-improvement!" she defends.

"Fill out these questionnaires," Moody grumbles, seeming less adamant about this particular aspect of the program than his introductory speech. He seems like more of a hands-on sort of guy, anyways, so that tracks. "Everyone will share their results after it's over. It will help you gain a more thorough understanding of your colleagues, and when you understand them better, you're able to operate better as a team."

James grabs a pen and starts filling out questions, deciding which things are most to least "him." He's convinced the whole thing is going to be garbage, but when he tallies him his scores, the results classify him as The Enthusiast, which… out of all the available options, _does _seem like the most accurate one.

He peeks over at Lily, who's finished her quiz ages ago and is studying the page of results.

"What'd you get?" she asks him quietly. "I'd peg you as a classic Type Seven."

"There's no numbers here, but I'm apparently an Enthusiast," he answers, trying to figure out where the hell she got a seven from.

"That's a Type Seven," she tells him, grinning with pride at her accuracy. "This is a bastardised version of the real Enneagram test, so I'm pretty sure they can't actually use the numbers, but it was pretty easy for me to match them up to their descriptions."

"So what are you then?"

"A Type Three," she points at her paper, where she's circled the words 'The Achiever.'

Which, yeah, makes a lot of sense. She's a high achiever if there ever was one.

The entire room seems to be filled with people talking under their breath to one another, which Moody takes as a sign that everyone has finished their tests. He passes out Post-It Notes, forcing everyone to write down their new identity and stick it on their chest.

Everyone follows directions, except Mary, who just writes 'this is stupid' on hers.

"A classic Type Eight," Lily tells James, once again talking about this like it's some natural language that everyone should understand. "It's natural that she'd choose to ignore being told what to do like that."

He just nods along, because, even without knowing what the hell half of the words coming out of her mouth mean, it's entertaining.

Moody makes them run through a couple more exercises of 'getting to know one another,' most of which are kind of pointless given that most of them are friends outside of work anyways and know a great deal about each other, but are required parts of the curriculum nonetheless.

The very last thing they do before getting dismissed for a lunch break is some sort of human knot exercise, by which James learns exactly how sweaty Peter's palms can get and the fact that Kingsley can basically just lift a fully-grown man off his feet with one hand without even breaking a sweat.

Needless to say, he's more convinced than ever that this 'mandatory training' is a giant waste of time.

(And it's really saying something when _he _thinks something is a waste of time, because he's pretty much the undisputed king of wasting time at work.)

There is one silver lining to the whole ordeal though - since they're all stuck in the same all-day activity, it means they get to go out for lunch as a team for the first time in months. Normally, they're all working different cases and in various stages of dealing with the happenings of the precinct that it's damn near impossible to coordinate taking a break at the same time.

After a rather heated debate in the elevator, they're heading in the direction of the pizza shop that Sirius and Remus swear by. It's not James' favorite place, but it'll do.

Besides, the company makes up for the fact that the place two blocks over has significantly better pizza sauce. Barely, but it does.

They must look like a really interesting group, going down the street. Peter is giving Sirius a piggyback ride for some reason, and Marlene has stopped at least twice to take pictures of scenery for her Instagram stories.

Lily's right by his side, laughing at something Remus just said, and suddenly, she's sliding her hand into his, interlacing their fingers together like it's just the most natural thing in the world.

It only lasts for a short while though, because out of nowhere, she yanks her hand out of his like he's shocked her and crosses her arms, a complete about-face of behavior that James doesn't know what to do with.

But then again, he doesn't know why he's confused by them anymore. They seem to be happening a lot lately, and it's not like he's ever actually bothered getting inside her head about them. He's resigned himself to living in the dark about her motivations - at least until he can see this stupid bet through - and then he'll _actually _make an effort to figure out what the hell is going on in that head of hers.

So instead, he turns his attention to Sirius and Peter and the fact that the two almost just collided with a pole.

"Please do not concuss yourselves," Remus says, shaking his head at the situation.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can't be _constantly vigilant_ with a concussion," James adds, smirking at his own joke.

It earns a laugh out of Lily, which is at least _something_ from her. "I still can't believe he just straight-up fell on top of both Peter _and _Marlene like that."

The trust fall with Marlene had been even more of a close call than Peter - James really doesn't get the man's fascination with them. After all, it doesn't even matter that Moody seems to blindly trust all of them to catch him at random - the whole point is that they should trust _each other_, isn't it?

But all things being said, Moody still isn't anywhere _near_ the weirdest person they've had come from the NYPD central office. No, that title will probably always belong to Gilderoy Lockhart.

"Honestly a bit of a miracle I caught him," Marlene chimes in. "He should've known I was in the middle of a tweet."

"Somehow, I think that's _why _he did it," Remus replies. "Can't be constantly vigilant when you're too busy sending your every thought out into the world."

"Hey now," she says, grinning, "I don't post my _every _thought. I have a very artfully curated Twitter feed, thank you very much."

Mary snorts. "Artfully curated."

"It's artfully curated to people who have _taste_," Marlene retorts jokingly.

The pizza joint basically appears out of nowhere - or maybe James had just stopped paying attention to his surroundings all that closely - so they all pile into the little place. They've got to shove a bunch of smaller tables together to make things work, but eventually there's enough room for the seven of them.

(Kingsley and Dumbledore apparently both saw themselves above a greasy little pizza spot - which James personally thinks is a complete shame, because… it's _pizza_. But to each his own, he supposes.)

James takes a seat on one end of the table, expecting that Lily will take the seat next to him, but instead, she makes a beeline for the exact opposite side of the table, sitting next to Mary and Remus.

Which is… huh.

They're not supposed to be attached at the hip by any means, and she's welcome to sit wherever she likes, but the combination of that and the way she's pulled her hand from his like he'd burned her just a few minutes ago is really building up to send the message that she doesn't want anything to do with him right now, and he's not sure what spawned that.

He doesn't miss the fact that he's not the only person who's noticed Lily's strange seating decision - Sirius is looking at him strangely, and Marlene's eyes are narrowed at Lily.

But he doesn't get to ponder it for much longer, because the whole table descends into a special sort of chaos as they try to sort out how to order pizza for seven people while catering to everyone's preferences.

"We should get anchovies!" Peter declares loudly, and half the table immediately responds to that with a very clear what-the-fuck look.

"We are _not _getting anchovies on pizza," Marlene replies.

"They really do wonders to enhance the flavour composition - you don't know what you're missing."

"I'll embrace the obliviousness, I think," she says, before looking around the table. "Anyone else have any awful ideas that I need to shoot down? If anyone says pineapple, we're going to have a problem."

James can see that Peter almost chimes in on that one as well, but thinks better of it at the last minute. He's probably (correctly) deduced that Marlene could probably take him in a fight, and decided that this is not the hill he wants to die on.

Eventually, after much intense discussion, they order three pizzas, all with different topping combinations, that somehow satisfy everyone's specifications.

And honestly, it feels like the most effective teambuilding activity they've done all day.

* * *

When they get back to lunch and all file back into the meeting room, they all end up in the same seats again. Which, of course, means James is next to Lily again.

He wants to laugh at the fucking irony of it - their whole thing was supposed to be being separate at work and together away from it, and somehow, they've performed the complete opposite today instead. She's closer to him when they're actually in the precinct than she was out of it.

It doesn't make any fucking sense.

She barely talked to him once during lunch. A full hour of the seven of them all sitting there eating pizza and talking shit, and she hadn't directly addressed him once. He's trying not to be personally affronted by that, but it doesn't seem to be working.

"Alright, we're going to do some role-playing scenarios to assess how you work together as a team in various situations," Moody says, as soon as the room fills and settles. "Everyone take two cards apiece, and they'll tell you the background of your scenarios and what role you'll be playing.

Moody walks around with what looks like a deck of playing cards with paper scotch-taped to them, and everyone takes cards. James glances at his selections briefly, only looking at the titles at first. They seem relatively innocuous, which is good.

The first one Moody calls on is 'Rumor About a Colleague,' which ends up including Mary, Sirius, and Kingsley. The rest of the card contains some sort of predetermined script, and they're apparently supposed to go off script to finish the ending, and then the rest of them are all meant to comment on what they think the trio did well and what could've done better.

"Did you hear about person 3 name's affair?" Mary says to Kingsley, completely stone-faced.

"Psst, Mary, you're supposed to actually say Sirius' name instead of 'person 3 name'," Kingley whispers, although it's a bit of a stage-whisper so everyone else can also hear it.

She looks uninterested at this new information, suggesting that she knows full well what she's supposed to do and isn't doing it purely for the sake of being obstinate. "I know."

Kingsley seems to decide better of trying to convince her to actually get into character, and responds by acting things out twice as dramatic to compensate. "I haven't heard _anything _about that!" he exclaims, slapping his hand to his chest.

"Apparently, person 3 name was caught cheating on their spouse and got kicked out of the house," Mary deadpans. "Yikes."

"Where did you hear that from?"

"Colleague name, who heard it from colleague name, who heard it from a friend of colleague name, who heard it from person 3 name's spouse."

Mary clearly isn't having it with _any_ of the fill-in-the-blanks today.

Sirius walks up to the two of them, reading off his own card. He's apparently settled for something right in the middle of Kingsley and Mary - not too overly dramatic but also not completely monotone either. "Hey guys. What's up?"

"Cheater," is all Mary says, before slapping her card down on the table. Apparently, the scripted part has come to an end.

"What did you just call me?" Sirius says, a hint of challenge in his voice as he reads his last line off of his own card.

Kingsley stands up straight, dropping the overdramatic demeanor and adopting something much more akin to his sergeant-handling-precinct-issues one. "Mary, that's not a very professional thing to say about your coworker."

Mary shrugs. "If the shoe fits…"

"Why are you calling me a cheater?"

"Because I heard it from colleague name who heard it from… wherever," Mary replies.

"Well I don't know where they got that information from," Sirius replies. "I didn't cheat on anyone."

If James didn't know that all of this was just acting, he might actually think Sirius and Mary are about to start throwing punches - Sirius because he's giving off just that exact level of coldness, and Mary because… well Mary almost always looks like she's half a second away from throwing a punch.

"Now, now, the information you heard through the grapevine might not be accurate," Kingsley says gently, clearly having taken on the role of mediator in this situation. "It's probably not wise for you to spread rumors around the office that you don't know are true, or to say rude things about them to your coworker."

Mary sighs, and it seems she's suddenly determined to go along with things for the sake of getting it over with as quickly as possible. "Sirius, did you have an affair?"

"Nope," he replies, popping the 'p' loudly. "I'm offended that you think I would though."

"Well, I'm sorry for making assumptions."

"And we're all good, problem solved!" Kingsley declares, looking at Moody expectantly, like he _also _cannot wait to get this fucking over with.

"Good," Moody responds, before looking out across the room. "Who has commentary on how they handled the situation, or how it could be handled better in the future?"

And despite her commentary that this whole teambuilding training thing is useless, Lily's still naturally the first one to put her hand in the air.

"Yes, Evans?"

"Well, for starters, the whole situation could be avoided if Mary had maintained professional boundaries and chosen not to discuss Sirius' personal life in the workplace," she rattles off, and James actively fights the urge to bang his head against his desk, because of _course _she's made it about that somehow.

"A good observation," Moody replies. "You should always treat your colleagues with a level of professionalism. Intimate details about their personal lives aren't great workplace conversation. Anyone else have any additional feedback?"

Remus ends up providing another answer, then Peter, and three contributions seems to be sufficient for Moody to stop discussion and move on to the next scenario.

"I would just like to say, the only time I have ever cheated on Remus was one time in Go Fish a few years ago," Sirius announces, before taking his seat again.

"Oh my god, I _knew _it!" Remus shouts, from the other side of the room. "I can't believe you."

Sirius just winks, before throwing his feet up on the desk and leaning back in his chair.

James finds himself inexplicably envious of their very public flirting. Although maybe it's not so inexplicable after all - if he tried to do something like that to Lily right now, she'd probably just dump him on the spot, at the rate today is going.

The rest of the scenarios play out, until they hit the very last card. And when James stands up for this one, Lily stands up as well.

'Differing Case Management Styles' is the title of this card, and James realises as he reads over it that the whole thing is almost a little _too _on the nose. Peter's joining them at the front for this one, and the third wheel is almost a welcome addition.

Lily kicks the scenario off. "James, Peter, we need to set an hour aside to discuss this case right now."

"Can it wait?" he replies, reading off his own lines. "I'm in the middle of another project, and I'd rather finish this one first."

"No, it can't wait," she tells him. "Peter, can you meet right now?"

"Uh, yeah," Peter answers.

"Great. In that case, Peter and I can take lead on this case since you can't be in the initial discussion."

"The captain said all three of us should be equal partners on this case," James says, feeling strangely affronted given that they're acting out an entirely fake scenario. He's also out of assigned lines.

"You don't seem to be able to prioritise this case over your many other pressing tasks, so it seems like maybe you shouldn't be primary," she replies primly, setting her own card down once she's done.

Now they're on their own - making the rest of it up as they go along.

Peter speaks first. "Now, now, we can all still be equal partners on this case. We just need to find a time to discuss that works for everyone."

"Right now _does _work for everyone, and this is important," Lily argues back.

"It can wait a couple of hours," James tells her, irrationally annoyed by her rigidity even though he knows it's in character for her role. "The whole thing won't cave in if I can just finish this report first."

"You can come back to it later."

"I'd prefer not to."

"The rest of us can meet now. Majority rules."

"Um, I never really cast a clear vote either way?" Peter chimes in nervously.

"But you're being _flexible_, and James is not."

It hits him right then that he _wants _to fight with her. He _wants _to turn this into some big dramatic thing, because at least then he finally gets to challenge her on _something_, given that he can't actually fight with her over the thing he actually wants to.

And yet, despite that, he bites his tongue. Partially because he's pretty sure it wouldn't take much for his personal feelings to start leaking into this entirely unrelated fake scenario, and partially because he has a feeling fake-fighting with her won't exactly endear him to her anyways, and he's not going to blow everything over some stupid work exercise.

"You're right, we should get to work on this case now," James relents, letting her have her way.

"Perfect." Her shoulders relax, and she smiles at him. And yet for some reason, her smile doesn't set off any of the butterflies in his stomach that it usually does.

"Yeah. Perfect."

He doesn't even register Moody asking for feedback, or anything that any of his colleagues have to contribute. Instead he's watching Lily, whose smile very quickly fades into an uneasy frown, and he tries, for maybe the millionth time, to work out what the fuck she could possibly be thinking about right now.

* * *

James goes for a run after work - something he normally _loathes _the concept of, especially in the middle of the fucking summer and on the busy city sidewalks instead of in an actual park, but he's got so much weird pent-up energy that he needs to work through _somehow_. And for some reason, the rhythmic drive of one foot after another hitting the pavement as he does his best to dodge the random street vendor and the group of high schoolers all on their phones is enough to do that.

Having to sit still in that fucking conference room all afternoon has done nothing to soften his feelings about the whole lunch situation - if anything, sitting on them for so long has only given him more time to weigh them in his mind. He feels like he's probably being overdramatic - his senses with Lily have always been heightened, which is a good thing sometimes, but right now, it's anything but.

She's confusing the fuck out of him, and not in the cute sort of heart-pounding way she had that day she'd asked him out. No, if he didn't know any better, he'd say she was intentionally toying with him somehow.

Why else would she be acting like this, so warm to him one minute and ice-cold the next?

He's pretty sure _he _hasn't done anything wrong. Granted, he's prone to fuck-ups, especially Lily-related fuck-ups, so it's entirely possible that he's somehow managed to do something to upset her, but for some reason… he doesn't think that's it.

Mostly because, if he'd fucked up and she was upset about something in particular, she wouldn't beat around the bush about it. She'd get right in his face and tell him exactly what he did wrong - she's pretty direct about things like that.

Something's off, even if he doesn't know what.

After he gets home (and chugs like three glasses of water, because he'd really underestimated the force of the early summer sun at 6 p.m.), he relays all of this to Godric, knowing full well that his cat will have absolutely no helpful insight for him.

But ranting about it out loud feels good somehow, especially because he can't exactly go to Sirius or Remus or Peter with any of it.

Curse this fucking bet.

It was great at first - he'd really thought it was the best thing to ever happen to him, watching Lily play with this very same cat on Saturday morning.

(Has it really only been three days since then? It feels like a year has elapsed over the past seventy-two hours, with how many times the ground has shifted underneath him in that time.)

But now, he's putting off confronting her about everything because he's so obsessed with not screwing things up before he has a chance to claim victory, and the fact that the bet so closely involves his best friends means that he can't even go to any of them for advice on how to handle it.

He should've said something the moment she made that proposition to 'separate work and personal,' he should've pointed out the damn near impossibility of that given how inextricably those two parts of their lives are entwined. He should've called her out on her confusing behavior yesterday, or today at the precinct.

If she doesn't already know that what she's doing is weird and confusing, someone should tell her. And if she does… well damn, he'd sure like an explanation for that.

Fuck it. He's texting her. And pouring himself a beer.

He takes a deep breath, and taps send on the message before he can spend too much time overthinking it.

_are you embarrassed to be with me, is that what it is?_

There's a brief lull before those three dots pop up on the screen, and they disappear and reappear at least four times before an actual reply comes.

**_what do you mean?_**

_today at lunch_

_you wanted nothing to do with me_

**_we're keeping work and personal separate, that's the rule_**

_that wasn't work though_

_that was lunch with some friends who also happen to be coworkers_

_we work with all of our closest friends_

_which is great, but it just… it makes all of this blurry_

_and you taking the broadest interpretation possible_

_means that we're literally only actually together when we're alone_

_hence my question_

_it seems like you want this to be some big secret, and i just want to know why_

He sounds pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic, but he can't even be bothered to care. This has been gnawing at him all fucking day, and by god, he just wants an answer. He wants to know where he stands with her, because he doesn't think he can handle any more of this hot-and-cold nonsense.

He knows Lily, but the Lily he knows isn't like this.

Once again, she takes a long time to reply, and James has downed at least a quarter of his beer by the time she answers him.

_i'm not embarrassed to be with you, i don't ever want you to think that._

**_this is just… i don't know _**

**_it's all so complicated_**

**_and you're right, there IS a lot of overlap_**

_there is_

He leaves it at that, unsure of anything else he could add to the conversation at this point. Because this has gotten him nowhere; part of him almost wishes the answer to his first question _had _been a yes, because at least then he'd have an explanation. As it stands, he's still got nothing.

A couple hours later, after he's showered and eaten dinner and gotten a couple episodes deep on Netflix, he gets another text from her, the preview notification flashing across his lock screen.

**_i'm sorry_**

He… he doesn't know what to do with that. On one hand, he's had time to cool down and isn't as frustrated as before - he's never been good at holding onto grudges for more than a few hours anyways.

But on the other, he doesn't really know what she's apologising for. Hell, he doesn't think _she _knows what she's apologising for. It feels weird to accept an apology when no one really knows what it's for.

So he sets his phone back down, message unopened and unanswered, and doesn't look at it again for the rest of the night.

* * *

**we're back to a lily pov next chapter ;)**


	9. heart attack

Lily feels oddly sick to her stomach when she wakes up the next morning.

She shouldn't be surprised - she felt the exact same way before she went to bed last night. She can pinpoint the moment it started, because it was the exact moment that the 'are you embarrassed to be seen with me, is that what it is?' message popped up on her phone.

When she first came up with her brilliant plan to win the bet without permanently losing James, she thought it'd be easy. She thought it'd only be a matter of her own self-control, and as long as she could stop making heart eyes at him for long enough to focus on the task at hand, it'd be fine.

What she hadn't expected at all was how fucking guilty she'd feel because of it. He's been nothing but completely accommodating of all her nitpicky requests that, yes, are founded in good reason but maybe take things just a step too far, but apparently they've been gnawing at him on the inside the entire time.

And for a guy whose ego is usually the size of the Empire State Building, the fact that she's apparently managed to crumble that foundation is… well, she can't stomach that one bit.

She doesn't want to hurt him like that. She'd never imagined that she _could _hurt the man who brushes off Dumbledore's pointed digs with ease, and weathers every event at the precinct with an almost envious optimistic attitude.

She _can't_ do that. Winning isn't worth that_._

It requires admitting that she's wrong, of course, even though she hates that. But then again, she _was_, wasn't she? Pretty much every single thing that has happened since making that bet with Mary has proven that, despite her expectations of James and everything she thought she knew about him, his feelings for her aren't just superficial.

They couldn't be. If they were superficial, he would've just gotten annoyed and dropped her, not sent her a series of increasingly vulnerable text messages trying to figure out where he went wrong. No, last night was probably the biggest and clearest sign that his feelings run deeper than that. They're not surface-level at all.

And neither are hers. She didn't expect that either, but it turns out she likes him so much that she's willing to take a hit on her pride and her constant need to be right for him.

By the time she's made it to the precinct, skipping breakfast entirely, she's come to a decision. She's going to come clean to James about all of it tonight, and she's going to admit defeat to Mary.

Cheese platter and all.

She's there before anyone else, which is nice, because there's a vague sense of calm that hardly ever exists there. The night shift is mostly gone, and none of her coworkers have arrived yet, and the emptiness allows her to clear her mind just a little bit, which is good, considering she's spent the whole morning thinking at an average rate of about a thousand miles a minute.

In fact, the only sound for her first five minutes there is the automatic air freshener going off.

She gets distracted wondering who's going to be responsible for refilling that once she leaves, or if the precinct is just going to go back to smelling like dirty laundry like it did before she started working here.

After making herself a cup of tea, she dives straight into her work, not paying all that much attention as the rest of her colleagues gradually trickle in. The only one she cares about is the last to arrive, and he falls into his seat with a half-hearted "G'morning."

"Morning," she greets, looking up at him with a smile. But he's not looking at her, so he doesn't see it.

She frowns at that. Clearly, his feelings last night haven't dissipated yet.

Not that she'd really expect them to. She's sure her behavior over the past few days has really put him through the ringer.

She can't _help it_ that he made it so fucking hard for her to follow through with all of her original plans. It had seemed easy at first - set some ground rules that could almost definitely be seen as ridiculous to anyone other than her, and enforce them just a little too rigidly. What she hadn't been prepared for, however, was the fact that every time she decided to let her guard down a little bit, she found herself relaxing into new patterns and rule-breaking and just… so much James.

It's just… he makes it _so_ easy to fall for him.

And so then she'd snap back into things and remember what she was supposed to be doing, and she'd put him at a healthy distance again. Which… yeah, from outside of her own head probably looks like pretty damn confusing and inexplicable behaviour.

Her inbox dings, drawing her attention back to work. And then, as soon as she sees the subject line of the email, her attention is brought back to James once again.

"Witness Protection got back to us with the witnesses' backstories," she tells him, and he snaps his head up to look at her when she does so.

"Oh?"

"Yeah," she nods. "Come over to my desk - we can read through the summaries together."

"Okay." He comes rolling over, but he's careful to leave at least a foot between the two of their chairs.

They both read the reports in silence, and Lily lets herself absorb all the information in front of them first before she lets herself start thinking deeply about it or analysing connections, so it's a pretty uneventful experience even though the report contains far more salacious information than Lily could've ever expected. The only interruption comes in the form of Peter rolling across the room in his chair and colliding with Kingsley's filing cabinet, and that particular occurrence is such a commonplace feature of the office that both of them hardly even pay mind to it after looking up once to determine the source of the thud.

When they get to the bottom of the last page, to the signatures of both of the witnesses affirming the truth in their testimony, James lets out a long, low whistle.

"Holy _fuck_," he says quietly. "No wonder Riddle wanted them dead."

That's one of the most notable revelations of the document - that the man who called himself 'Voldemort' in his work with Lestrange and Crouch is actually Tom Riddle, one of the wealthiest men in Manhattan and, from everything Lily's read about him before this, a total asshole.

And now, he's both a total asshole _and _a criminal.

"I mean… they've got so much dirt on him - and they were going to publish it," Lily replies, her voice barely above a whisper as well. "And I imagine Riddle knew that embezzling money from charities to fund his private prison isn't exactly the sort of thing that would go over well when it got out."

James pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Well, yeah, that sort of shit's going to get him in jail - and probably having to pay all that money back."

"Yeah," Lily nods. "This is honestly probably going to have to go above us - not to Major Crimes obviously, because fuck Snape, but evidence of fraud and embezzlement definitely needs to go to like, the District Attorney's office for investigation."

"Ha, yeah, there's no way in hell the Vulture's getting his hands on any of this case," James agrees, leaning back in his chair. His knee bumps into hers, bringing her awareness to how much closer they've moved in the process of reading and talking through the transcript. "Shame this isn't all that helpful for tracking down Lestrange."

"Lestrange?" A third voice joins the conversation, and Lily turns to discover that Sirius' ears have perked up at that surname.

"Er, yeah," James replies awkwardly, and Lily can immediately tell that they're treading perilously close to a conversation James has been dreading.

"That's not a super common surname," Sirius replies, kicking his feet up on his desk. "Honestly, the only person I've ever met with that last name is my shitty cousin's husband."

… _Fuck_.

James runs his hand through his hair, nervousness evident in his voice. "Bellatrix, yeah?"

"That's the one," Sirius replies. "Haven't talked to her in years - she was always a bit of a nightmare, so like, good riddance."

James clears his throat. "Padfoot, wanna go with me to get a donut from that place up the street?"

Sirius looks between James and Lily. "Are you not going to invite your _girlfriend_ along?" he asks, a teasing tone in his voice.

James looks over to her briefly, the panic in his eyes almost but not completely masked. It's evident that this is a conversation James wants to have with Sirius alone, and she gets that. "She's got - "

"I need to start work on transferring some of this transcript into the right hands as soon as possible," she finishes for him, and there's an immediate look of relief and gratification on his features.

Sirius shrugs. "Fair enough."

The two of them are gone for a long time - almost an hour, which is _way _longer than it takes to go get donuts, even when the place _is _super crowded and busy.

She actually pulls out her phone to send him a text asking if everything's okay, but her heart drops again when she sees their message history, and she talks herself out of it. James can handle himself, anyways, and if it turns out that Sirius _is _taking this news really badly, James doesn't really need her pestering him as well.

It's all well and good anyways, because the two of them appear not even five minutes later, bearing two giant boxes of donuts and, for some strange reason, giant multicoloured wizard hats that look like the sort of thing random street vendors try to pawn off onto tourists.

"Do I want to ask about the hats?" Remus says, immediately grabbing a donut from the box the other two brought in.

Sirius shrugged. "Life felt too serious for a minute there - and obviously something had to be done about that."

Lily looks over at James, hoping for some sort of confirmation or explanation of what's going on, and to her surprise, he's already watching her. She mouths an 'is everything okay?' which is quickly answered with a 'everything is fine.'

Clearly, explaining to Sirius that his fucked-up cousin might also be a serial assassin didn't go over as poorly as it could've.

She eventually gets a crème brûlée donut from the selection they've brought back and gets back to work. James comes back to his own desk not long after, and they work in peaceful companionship for the rest of the morning.

Well, as peaceful of companionship as can be achieved at the perpetually chaotic 73rd Precinct. (Which is to say, a donut is thrown across the room at one point, and Mary very creatively and loudly swears at her computer no fewer than six times in two hours.)

* * *

The rest of the day's investigation work yields hardly any additional useful information, except for maybe a few more details about the link between the convicts whose tattoos resembled Crouch's briefcase lining. Apparently, they'd all been in the same community organization at one point in time a few years ago - an organization that has all but disappeared in the past few years.

But between that discovery and the information about Riddle that's been handed off to federal authorities for investigation, Lily feels like it's more or less been a largely successful day.

Well, successful minus the fact that James still won't talk to her about anything that's not strictly work-related, and that's started to bother her more than it should.

"Step away from the desks - it's karaoke time!" Marlene declares at 5 pm on the nose, looking across the precinct at everyone who's still working.

Lily would prefer to finish off the progress notes she's in the middle of writing, but she also knows Marlene, and she knows that if she doesn't actually heed her friend's directions, she will be forcibly dragged away from her desk, rolling chair and all.

And she doesn't particularly want to have to explain to Dumbledore why her office chair is sitting in the middle of the building lobby again.

So she locks her computer, grabs her bag, and heads over to the elevator.

"I'm still pissed that Dumblediddles isn't coming," Marlene says as they exit, and Lily has to hold back a laugh at what honestly has to be the worst nickname she's given their captain yet.

Not everyone else has that same level of restraint though. "Dumblediddles, _seriously_?" Peter asks, looking at her disbelievingly. "That's got to be the least fitting name for that man that I have _ever _heard."

"No, I think Dumbiedoo wins that title," Remus replies.

"Ah, that was a good one," Marlene says fondly, clearly not at all bothered by how much everyone else in the elevator is shitting on her nickname creations.

The karaoke bar is only a short ten-minute walk from the precinct, and as soon as they step inside they're immediately escorted to their own private room, complete with a performance stage and all. It's not what Lily had originally envisioned, but she's immeasurably thankful that she's only going to be stuck singing off-key in front of her coworkers rather than an entire bar of strangers.

Although granted, the coworkers are the ones most likely to record her for blackmail - logically, complete strangers would probably somehow be a _safer_ audience.

Their private room has one giant booth meant to hold all of them; so they all pack into the rounded seating, and Lily ends up with James on one side of her and Marlene on the other. There are at least five binders full of the available song listings for them to choose from, and directions for how to add new songs and performers to the queue.

Lily grabs one of them immediately - unlike nearly everyone else, who all go straight for the drink menus instead. She sees her choice as the far more logical one, really: she gets the exact same drink everywhere she goes, but picking a song to perform for karaoke is a much rarer occasion. Therefore, she needs more time to deliberate on this one.

It's a massive selection, including everything from classic 60s rock to Shaggy's 'It Wasn't Me,' which strikes Lily as objectively one of the worst potential karaoke songs to ever exist.

Someone must order her drink for her, because there's a whiskey Diet Coke in front of her without her even needing to ask for it, and she starts sipping on it as she flips through the book some more.

She notices that James is reading over her shoulder, and instantly comes up with a brilliant idea.

"We should do a duet," Lily says to him, flipping to the T section of the alphabetised list. "I'm sure there's some good Taylor Swift selections in here that we could go off of."

"Uh, yeah, that sounds good," he says, but suddenly he's not paying much attention to the catalogue at all. "I'm good with whatever - take your pick."

She can't help but feel a bit dejected at his response - if anything, the prospect of Taylor Swift karaoke should've at least gotten _some _sort of excited reaction out of him. Maybe it'll change when they actually get up to do it though, so she tries to not let it get her down too much when she gets up and goes over to the sign-up booth.

She writes in their names, and scrolls down to 'Love Story' - it feels like just the sort of cheesy, happy song to lift his spirits and have a little fun with. They're fifth on the list, which is good - four other people will make fools of themselves before either her or James have to sing.

It's not like Lily's a _bad _singer or anything, but is _anyone _really a good singer when it comes to karaoke?

James might be; it really wouldn't surprise her, he seems to be full of all sorts of secret talents and she's yet to find something he's _not _good at.

The group collectively decides that they should all wait until they're all at least on their second drink at minimum before starting in on karaoke (and Lily has no intention of going further than that; Two-Drink Lily is probably the last level that should be trusted with a microphone), so the first half of the evening is spent just talking amongst themselves instead.

James is still somewhat distant; despite his physical proximity, it definitely feels like he's set up some sort of wall between the two of them, and he doesn't seem to be all that receptive to any of her attempts to tear it down.

She supposes she can't really blame him for that; most of the times that she's been like this over the past few days have been swiftly followed by her switching back into the character she'd been trying to hard to maintain, and he's made it pretty clear that he hasn't enjoyed that particular rollercoaster.

And so it seems, maybe his new solution is to just not get on at all.

Things will be better, she reminds herself, after they're able to be alone tonight and after she comes clean about everything. She's sure he'll be at least somewhat annoyed with her, but not any more than he already is - at least he'll know the truth, and he'll know that she's done playing hot-and-cold.

All their cards will be out on the table, and everything will be okay. She knows it will be.

Sometime between the first and second drink, Lily excuses herself from the room to go to the bathroom.

The bar is nearly a labyrinth, and she manages to get lost both on her way there and on her way back.

It's on that return trip, where she's almost definitely walked by their room and completely missed it somehow, that she hears two voices coming from a small alcove. At the sound of them, she freezes.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," a voice that's instantly recognisable as Sirius says. "They were doing so good this weekend - what the hell happened?"

"I think I underestimated Lily's stubbornness," another voice - Marlene - answers.

And while Lily normally isn't one for eavesdropping, the mention of her name piques her curiosity instantly. She's going to listen in on this for just a little bit longer.

"_Clearly_," Sirius replies, exasperated.

"I really thought she'd give up on the whole 'push him away for a little bit but get back together in a few weeks' scheme after a few days. She'd normally feel guilty for pushing someone around like that."

They're talking about her and James. First of all, she _does _feel guilty, thank you very much, which is why she's been planning on telling James about the bet all day. But second of all, why the _fuck_ is Marlene talking about this with Sirius of all people, who's not involved in this whatsoever?

"I mean, James isn't exactly helping things either." There's a thud that sounds like Sirius falling against the wall. "He's gotten obsessed with making sure he doesn't do anything that could possibly be mistaken for disagreeing with her - he's convinced that if he tries to pick apart her behaviour, it'll stall out their relationship. So he's just rolling over and letting her do whatever, even though he knows full well that something's off."

"You said this plan was idiot-proof," she shoots back. "Tell me then, why is it backfiring so horribly?"

"Because, _clearly_, they're both beyond just idiots."

Lily takes offense to that.

She's no idiot - no, the cogs in her brain are spinning at a rapid-fire pace, connecting the dots of their conversations. Sirius knows all the background of the bet somehow. And… James does too? Is he somehow on Mary's team?

No, that wouldn't make sense. If that were the case, Sirius wouldn't sound so annoyed at James right now. This sounds like something else entirely.

"Over-competitive idiots, for sure," Marlene replies. "Honestly though, _we _should've predicted this. We gave the two most competitive people we know opposing wagers - ones that are _literally_ worthless outside of bragging rights, but even so, still something you can win - and we somehow expected them to give up as soon as they realised they'd be totally happy just letting things progress like a normal relationship and forgetting the absurd standards of their bets altogether? That was foolishly wishful thinking on our part."

Bets. Plural.

Sirius laughs hollowly. "It worked for a while though. I mean, I told you everything that happened at the cabin. They were… stupidly happy together, and Prongs was really convinced that she'd finally started to actually like him."

"And then _you _had to rub it in his face all over again that he was supposed to make her fall in _love _with him if he was going to win."

Lily's heart drops into her stomach.

There was a second bet. James has been spending this whole time under a _separate _bet, trying to make her fall in love with him for… what? Bragging rights? The knowledge that he could bag Lily Evans in the two weeks before she switched precincts?

It had all been a set-up.

None of this has been real.

Suddenly, her vision is flooded with red. she's absolutely fucking _furious _that this man - this man she'd really started to like, and really started to believe might've been genuinely into her - has actually just been playing her all along, like she's some sort of prize to be won.

She storms away, suddenly single-minded in her pursuit of one person in particular. She finds him, back at the group table where she'd left him, and is not at all subtle when she walks right up to him with a very clipped, "We need to talk. Alone."

He looks up at her, and a million different emotions flash through his eyes in an instant, and then, oddly enough, he just looks resigned to it all. "Yeah, sure," he says, getting up from his seat and seemingly not even caring about the confused looks the two of them are getting from everyone else at the table.

She turns on her heel and walks out of the bar, only looking back once, to ensure that he's following her. Unlike the path to the bathroom, the one to the front of the building is a straight shot, and she doesn't get lost this time.

And as soon as they're outside and the door swings shut, she rounds on him.

"I can't believe I ever let myself think you were for real. That I wasn't just some sort of prize to you," she says, the words betraying more emotion than she wants them to.

James just blinks at her, baffled. "What?"

"You don't have to play dumb," she replies. "I overheard Sirius - I know all about the fact that you made a fucking _bet_ that you could make me fall in love with you. That I was just some little thing you thought you could _win _and then drop as soon as you proved your point."

His eyes go wide. "It's not - that's not what it was like at all."

"Really?" She puts her hands on her hips, challenging him to elaborate. "Then what _was _it like?"

She's not sure there's _any _way he can spin this into a positive light, although she'd really love to see him try.

"It was - " he trails off, biting his lip nervously. "I was trying to win you over, yeah, but not just because Sirius made some stupid bet with me over it."

"Oh, so you could have the thrill of the conquest too?" There's a tiny voice in the back of her head that says maybe she's being dramatic, and maybe she's putting meanings behind his words that aren't actually there, but she's so hurt and angry right now that she stifles that sensible part of her brain immediately.

"No, _god_, can you stop putting words in my mouth?"

It's too late for that - Lily's words are coming out too fast for her to even think about them at all. "This is exactly why I told Mary it'd be so fucking easy to get you to get over me in ten days," she snaps. "Because you really only liked the idea of me, didn't you? The idea of winning over the woman you shared a desk with before she left for good, adding another notch to your fucking bedpost just in time - "

He interrupts her. "Hold on, you were trying to get me to get _over you_ in ten days? What the actual fuck?"

Her blood runs cold as she realises what she's just said - she's laid far too much of her own hand. "I had a bet with Mary," she mutters, hoping like hell that maybe he won't hear her.

Her hopes go unanswered though, because he laughs disbelievingly, before replying, "So you're telling me… that you _also _made a bet about me - one that involved emotionally manipulating me into thinking I didn't actually like you anymore - and somehow _you're_ mad at _me_?"

"Yes!" she replies emphatically, practically shouting. "Because you let me believe your feelings for me were actually genuine and real - _god,_ I was so fucking _stupid _to think that - "

"My feelings for you _are _genuine and real."

"How am I supposed to believe that? How am I supposed to know you mean anything you say anymore, when I don't know if you're just saying it to win some stupid bet?"

That seems to stump him, and he frowns. "Because you know me. You can trust me."

She takes a deep breath, and suddenly her anger gives way to the feeling that she's liable to start crying at any moment instead. "I thought I did. But now… now I'm not so sure."

And if she could catalogue a list of the most heartbreaking things she's ever seen in her life, the broken look on James' face as her words sink in would find itself somewhere near the top.

But she's not wrong, and she's not going to take them back. Knowing that he did what he did - that he's spent the last eight days leading her on to win a bet, she doesn't know how she's meant to believe him now.

How much of this is built on a lie?

James coughs, and the injured expression on his face is replaced with something harder. "No, Evans, you don't get to just play the victim here - you put me through hell these last few days with your whole hot-and-cold nonsense. And _you _lied to me too - I mean really, did you even mean it when you asked me out or was that all just part of the plan to trick me into dating and dumping you to win some stupid bet?"

She freezes, caught off-guard by his sudden change in disposition. "I - I - "

He scoffs in disbelief. "The whole thing was fucking fake. _Naturally_."

"It wasn't fake," she shoots back, finding her voice again. "I mean, maybe it was when I asked you out initially, but by the time we actually went on a date, and when we went upstate for the weekend… that was real."

"You're going to tell me that was real, but then somehow you decided that despite those 'real' feelings weren't worth losing a bet for? You're either lying to me or you're fucking delusional, and I really don't know which one is worse."

"I was going to come clean about it tonight," she replies softly, and she suddenly feels oh-so-very small. "After last night, I was done messing you around - I was going to accept defeat because it wasn't worth it."

"It took you _that_ long to realise 'oh hey, maybe I _shouldn't _be fucking around with other people's emotions like they're my own personal playthings'? _Really_?"

James is properly pissed off now - it's not a side of him Lily's used to seeing, and definitely not ever directed at her.

"Were you _ever _planning on telling me the truth?" she shoots back. "At least _I _decided to be honest - and what would you have done, just pretended to gradually lose interest in me after I change precincts and blame it on our differences? You can't fucking lecture me on messing you around when you were doing the _exact same thing_!"

"I wasn't ever lying!" He rakes his hand through his hair in frustration, knocking his glasses off-kilter and not bothering to right them. "That's the difference here, Evans - I actually _liked _you from the start, and I never did anything I wouldn't have done without Sirius' stupid bet there in the first place!"

"You're telling me that, without this bet, you would've been perfectly fine with my stupid rules, and not had a single counterargument?"

His jaw twitches. "Maybe I would've, maybe I wouldn't - I don't fucking know. I wasn't a fan of them, but I'm also not just going to steamroll over your boundaries - and for being a bunch of 'stupid rules,' you were pretty damn well convincing of them."

He makes a fair point, but it's not enough to temper the feelings of hurt and betrayal blooming in her chest. She's intimately familiar with this feeling; she's been here all too many times before with all too many people. It's the whole reason she'd been so hesitant to get involved with James in the first place.

How could she _ever _have fooled herself into thinking he was different?

"That's not what's important here," she replies, her voice measured and not at all indicative of the storm of emotion inside of her. "The important thing is that you've shown me I was right all along about you. And you're right, I never should've asked you out to begin with - right about now, I'm really wishing I never did it at all."

His lips part, but no words come out; he just stares at her, completely at a loss.

The door to the karaoke bar opens, and Remus appears, looking _extremely _awkward and uncomfortable. Clearly, at least part of their conversation has carried to the other side of the door.

"Er," he begins, looking at an unspecified object in the distance instead of at either of their faces, "we're about to start karaoke."

"Good," James says, his voice cold. "This conversation is over anyways."

And despite the heat of Lily's own anger, the ice of his voice and the sense of finality in it slices right through it all, hits her straight in the heart.

She brushes Remus' shoulder as she walks back into the bar, not looking back at James once, not trusting herself not to react - scream, cry, whatever - if she looks at him right now. Instead, she walks with an almost laser focus to the karaoke machine, hits a few buttons, and finds a new set on the complete opposite side of the table from where James had been sitting.

When he walks into the room with Remus just a few moments later, he doesn't pay any mind to Lily's new location, just sits back in his old spot and acts like nothing happened. Lily sees Marlene and Sirius exchange a look, one that suggests they _both _know by now that they were overheard, and she feels a different wave of frustration wash over her.

The fact that the two of them orchestrated all of this - set her and James up to get into this mess to begin with, not even thinking about how many ways it could backfire and actually hurt people - is just… she knows they're not _entirely _to blame, but she's unavoidably angry at them nonetheless. If they'd really wanted to meddle and attempt to get her and James together, there are _so _many better ways they could've gone about it that _wouldn't _have hinged on everything in their relationship being a lie - hell, locking them in the supply room until they made out would've been a better option than this was.

But other than that meaningful look between Marlene and Sirius, no one wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room that is her and James' new seating arrangement and newfound coldness towards one another, so karaoke kicks off with Marlene's dramatic performance of 'Alejandro' by Lady Gaga.

Watching her colleagues make fools of themselves and act incredibly goofy with one another serves to distract Lily and lift her spirits slightly, but reality comes back to her when the screen flashes with a 'Next Up: Lily and James.'

She gets up from her seat with an almost laser focus, going and grabbing both microphones off the stand. When she whirls around, James is standing right there behind her, hands shoved in his pockets and a clear reluctance to do this evident on his face.

She realises he probably thinks they're still doing a cutesy love song - he wasn't in the room when she edited it, after all.

"I've changed our song selection, by the way," she informs him, trying her hardest to keep her voice level.

His eyebrows shoot up. "To what?"

She hands him a microphone, careful not to let her skin touch his. "You'll see."

The all-too-familiar opening chords of 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' ring out through the karaoke bar, and Lily watches as recognition flits across James' features.

"That's rich, Evans," he says coldly, keeping the microphone far away from him so that it doesn't pick up his words.

She shrugs primly. "It felt fitting," she replies, before immediately starting in on the opening line.

For as out of sync as they may be in real life, they easily play off of each other in karaoke, tossing lines back and forth with ease as James declares that '_I'm really going to miss you picking fights_' and Lily answers with '_and me falling for it screaming that I'm right_.'

They both practically yell the choruses at each other, neither of them caring much about melodic accuracy and focusing more on communicating whatever leftover anger is still built up inside of the both of them from fighting.

As they sing the last line and the music fades away, Lily realises how hard she's breathing, frozen in place and looking into James' hardened hazel eyes with an equally cold look of her own.

Peter's low whistle is the first thing to break the silence. "Someone get those two a room."

"I think that's the exact opposite of what either of them want right now," Sirius replies, and Lily's immediately aware of how she and James look right now, facing off at each other and ready to burst.

And somehow, Lily doesn't even have that in her. She's normally known for flying off the handle when provoked, but every ounce of that fight feels completely drained from her right now.

So she puts her microphone back on the stand, walks over to the table, grabs her purse, and walks out of the restaurant.

The hot summer air is stifling, even though the sun's halfway down already; she feels like she can't breathe properly as she sets off down the pavement at a pace that's ridiculously fast even by New York standards. But if she slows down she'll have to think, have to let her mind settle on things that aren't putting one foot in front of the other as fast as humanly possible without breaking into an all-out run, and she can't have that right now.

The karaoke bar is in the opposite direction of her apartment from the precinct, so the walk home is even longer than usual. Red baby hairs are plastered to the side of her face with sweat by the time she gets home, and she's breathing heavily with exertion. If she looked at herself in a mirror right now, she'd probably very closely resemble a tomato, cheeks and neck brightly flushed from the heat and the effort and something else as well.

She immediately gets into the shower when she gets home, setting the water to cold and just standing underneath it numbly, letting it cool her down and drain out whatever leftover energy she has left.

Once she's hit the point where the cold water ceases being soothing and turns downright uncomfortable, she turns it off, stepping out of the shower and immediately going off in pursuit of whatever giant sweatshirt and sweatpants combo she can get her hands on first.

Then she grabs a tub of ice cream out of the fridge - it's a rare occasion that she'll eat ice cream as an actual meal, but it feels warranted right now - and sits down on the couch, curling her knees to her chest and finally letting the reality of the evening sink in.

The words weren't ever said explicitly, but the implication was there - she and James are over.

She got what she wanted. She won.

So why, then, does it feel like such a loss?

She feels the loss of James acutely, like something actively clawing at her chest. As betrayed as part of her may feel, there's absolutely no denying that another part of her misses him and wishes tonight had gone differently. She wishes he hadn't made that bet at all, that she'd been able to just follow through with her original plan and to come clean to him about everything tonight and get things between them back on track.

But then again, his bet wouldn't have existed without hers. And without that bet, Lily would've never asked him out in the first place, and maybe none of this would've even happened at all.

And despite what she said in the heat of the moment, she doesn't want that either.

She takes another massive bite of chocolate ice cream, and watches as her phone lights up with a text notification from Marlene.

_fuck lil i am sooooo sorry_

_i never thought this plan would backfire so badly_

Lily opts not to respond - she's still angry at Marlene, and she really doesn't need to go off the handle on someone else tonight. Besides, if she lets herself think about it logically instead of emotionally, Marlene's not _really _the one to blame here, after all.

No, maybe the real person Lily needs to be blaming for all of this is herself.


	10. big plans

DAY NINE

* * *

James doesn't sleep when he gets home. Instead, he spends a lot of time pacing around his apartment, trying to work through the mess going on in his own head. Even Godric realises that he's clearly going through something right now, because he doesn't even so much as meow at James when he empties the last of his food bowl.

Midnight strikes, and he's _so _tired, but even the mere thought of sleep seems completely unfathomable.

Sirius has texted him at least five times, but James hasn't bothered opening any of those up just yet - he knows he probably has no right to be upset considering he fully went along with it, but he can't help but be at least a little bit annoyed that his best friend orchestrated all of this with Marlene.

Truthfully, most of his anger has melted away at this point anyways. Anger was an instinctive reaction, a protective one, guarding the true feelings underneath it. It was never meant to last.

The truth of the matter is that James is just… sad.

Sad that the past eight days have been built on a lie. Sad that in a way, Lily was right - she's not who he expected that she'd be, because he never expected that she'd do something like this. Sad that he let himself get pulled into a scheme that ended up hurting _her_ too.

And yet... against all logic or reason, he doesn't want this to be the end for them. He's not sure if that's even possible - if Lily ever even _did _have feelings for him at all, there's a good chance they were completely eradicated tonight - but he can't help but hold onto a dream where he shows up at her door in a few days' time with flowers and an apology, and she responds in kind (minus the flowers of course, because he'd probably kill those immediately), and they get their happy ending after all.

He knows it's probably destined to be nothing but a dream, but it's stuck in his mind nonetheless.

By 3 a.m., he's just about resigned himself to the fact that there's no way he's sleeping tonight and that he'll have to drag himself to the office tomorrow morning looking like a complete wreck - a great look when he's going to have to face the woman he's both hurt and been hurt by - when there's a request from the callbox. He accepts it without even thinking about it, without even checking to see who it is, which is probably a foolish decision on his part, because who the hell's trying to get into his apartment complex at this hour?

There's a faint knock on his door - James doesn't know _why _he jumps at it, because it's a completely natural thing to follow letting someone into your building, but it startles him nonetheless - and he walks over to the entryway to check the peephole.

On the other side of the door is an unmistakable flash of auburn hair - just about the last thing he was expecting to find standing outside his apartment. He immediately opens the door for her, without even pausing to think twice about it. Yes, he's angry and hurt and all sorts of other things, but at the end of the day, it's Lily, and he'll always open a door that she's on the other side of.

But as soon as he pulls the door open, he finds himself unexpectedly speechless. Lily, quite frankly, looks just as wrecked as he does, hair pulled into a haphazard bun and wearing a maroon sweatshirt that's so oversized it comes down to her mid-thigh.

He blinks a few times, attempting to confirm that no, he's not dreaming this. But she's still there, and no wildly out-of-place things have appeared in his line of sight either, so he accepts that this probably _is _in fact reality.

She breaks the silence first. "Hi."

"What are you doing here?" he blurts out, his brain skipping over any sort of formalities.

She looks surprised at his directness for a moment, then takes a deep breath and answers him. "I came to apologise. And I understand that it's probably too soon and I totally get it if you shut the door in my face, but I couldn't sleep and I knew it wasn't going to happen until I at least had the chance to try to say I'm sorry to your face."

If James were a different person, if he was the type who was capable of holding on to anger or resentment for more than an hour or so, he might've done exactly what she suggested, and closed the door on her right then and there. But he's not, and something about this apology feels fundamentally different from her last one over text, so what he does instead is open the door wider.

"Do you want to come in?"

She looks at him like she doesn't quite believe what he's saying. "Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't be offering if I wasn't," he answers. "It would probably be good for us to have a conversation that doesn't involve yelling at each other outside of a bar and doing passive-aggressive Taylor Swift karaoke, and I can't sleep either, so why not now?"

She nods, wrapping her arms around herself as she steps inside. "Yeah, now is good."

They end up in his living room, seated on opposite sides of the couch, Lily with her feet tucked under her and James with his gaze focused on his hands in his lap, the awkward silence engulfing them both for a while.

He should say something.

James opens his mouth to speak, to break the mounting tension with something, _anything_, but Lily ends up beating him to it.

"I shouldn't have made a bet on toying with your feelings," she says, her gaze focused on the couch cushions. "And beyond that point, I shouldn't have let things go as far as they did - I should've called things off the moment I started realising you didn't just like me on a surface-level, or the moment I started liking you as well, instead of pulling some ridiculous scheme so that I could have my cake and eat it too. None of that was fair to you."

He knows he shouldn't, but he fixates on one point in her apology. "You actually liked me as well?"

She laughs hollowly, wrapping her arms around herself again. "I told you as much tonight, didn't I? I meant that. I like you - _present tense_ \- more than I ever expected I would, which is why it hurts so much that I've irreparably fucked this up with you."

He takes a long, deep breath before answering. "Is it really, though? Irreparable, that is?"

She looks over at him, her green eyes wide and glassy with unshed tears. "I - I don't know. I mean, I figured you'd want nothing to do with me after tonight. I'm still surprised you let me into your apartment, to be honest. I was expecting you to listen to my apology and immediately shut the door in my face."

"Evans, you weren't the only one who made some stupidly over-competitive bet," he replies. "I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I somehow thought you were so much worse than me for doing the exact same thing."

"But I was worse!" she pushes back. "I was doing things with the sole intention of trying to get you to drop me, and I hurt you in the process and caused you a lot of unnecessary confusion and doubt - all because I was let myself get wrapped up in my own fucking pride."

He starts to speak, but she starts again before he gets the chance to. "And I just… I immediately assumed the worst about you. Both before the bet even started, and tonight. And you didn't deserve that - you've proven over and over and over again that you're genuine and good and kind-hearted and sincere and… I let myself doubt that."

He sighs, his hand jumping to his hair automatically. "You know it was never a game with you, right? I mean, yeah, I agreed to some dumb bet with Sirius, but I… I've liked you for a longtime. I wasn't just going to drop you as soon as the ten days were up. I might've been planning to have a long chat about why you'd suddenly started acting so weird, but… everything else still stands."

She looks down at her hands again. "Yeah, I know that. I mean, I didn't for a while, because I was convinced you didn't _actually_ feel that way about me, but then I actually started seeing you and getting to know you and I realised that wasn't true at all. And then I kind of let myself start believing that again tonight because I jumped to the immediate worst conclusions, but… yeah, I know it wasn't like that. That's why I was planning on coming clean to you about my side of things tonight."

Her eyes find his. "I put you through so much shit just to prove a point that I wasn't even right about. I don't even know _why_."

James chuckles. "I do."

She frowns, confused.

"Because you're _extraordinarily_ competitive. Which, believe it or not, is actually one of the things I like about you."

"It is?"

"Yes," he nods, before changing the subject entirely, to something he'd been thinking about quite a lot in those few moments tonight where he'd forced himself to stop wallowing in his own misery. "Also seriously, I can't believe you thought laser tag as a date idea would make me like you _less._"

"I faked out and tackled you to the ground to win," she says, like that's somehow a rational explanation. Like she somehow thinks he _wouldn't _have found that absolutely fucking brilliant.

He tells her as much. "Which was a massive turn-on, honestly. I had half a mind to just start making out with you right there."

She laughs softly. "We would've scarred those 12-year-olds for life."

"Oh, for sure." A grin creeps its way onto his face at the memory of their first date. He finds that he wants to do that all over again; fight tonight or not, he still wants many, many more nights like that.

There's a long pause, not an awkward one but not an entirely comfortable one either. Lily looks like she's weighing things in her mind, and James isn't entirely sure what to make of that.

She breaks her silence eventually, her hands fidgeting in her lap as she talks. "So… what does this mean? I'll be entirely honest, I still wasn't expecting you to actually listen to my apology much less accept it, so… I hadn't really thought this part through yet."

He tries to think about it, but really, there's only one answer he can give.

"Why don't we give this a go for real this time? No bets, no competitions, no pretending to be anything we're not."

She looks up at him, a faint look of surprise on her features once again. "You want that?"

He nods. "Those first couple of days, before either of us really started taking those stupid bets seriously, those were absolutely fantastic. If that's what us being together for real is like, then yeah, I definitely want that."

Somehow, over the course of their conversation, they've moved from sitting on opposite ends of the couch to being practically on top of each other. Lily's ankle is linked around one of his, and his arm resting on the back of the couch is just inches above her shoulder.

"Do _you _want that?" he asks, the words tumbling out of his mouth so quickly that he has no time to be nervous about how she might answer.

Maybe, just _maybe_, the lack of nervousness is because he knows how she'll answer this time.

There's an immense softness in her green eyes as she leans into him even closer. "Yes."

"Well, now that that's settled," he trails off, because there's only one way he _can _finish that sentence, and it doesn't involve using his words.

He closes the last bit of space between them and kisses her.

It's just as magical as the first time, if not just a little more tender. He thinks of the other time she kissed him on his couch like this and of all the time they have in front of them to keep doing it, and everything else just seems to melt away.

Everything except Godric, apparently, because he picks that exact moment to jump up on the couch, sprawl out across both of them, and meow as loudly as possible.

Lily breaks the kiss first, laughing and looking down at the blob of orange fur spread across her lap fondly.

"Does this count as earning his blessing?" she asks, petting the now-loudly-purring cat.

"I think you earned his blessing before this," James replies. "I told you, he doesn't normally like new people, and he fell in love with you instantly. I think that's as close to a blessing as you're going to get."

Lily leans her head on his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around her, just holding her there. It's some ungodly hour in the morning, he's just gotten off what feels like the most aggressive emotional roller coaster of his life, and somehow... he's happy with all of that.

It's been an awful past couple of days, but something about this moment makes him feel like things are probably going to be alright from here on out.

And Godric, mind-reading cat that he is, decides that since his owner is no longer in some sort of emotional crisis, it is now a totally fair time for him to jump off of their laps, walk over to his food bowl, and meow at the very top of his tiny lungs.

"I should probably feed the beast before he wakes up the entire apartment complex," James says, letting his arm fall from Lily's side.

"He's really a very polite cat for waiting until after our conversation to do that," she says, smiling at him as he goes into the kitchen to find the dry food.

"For all his faults, he's very good at picking up social cues," he agrees.

As he's doling out food for his very impatient cat, Lily brings up a totally different subject. "Marlene texted me like five times apologising for setting up this whole coordinated scheme to begin with."

"Oh god, Sirius did the same to me."

She pauses for a moment, looking very deep in thought. "You know, we _could _have some fun with this."

He can't see her face, but the mischievous tone in her voice is utterly unmistakable. And he _loves _the sound of it.

"Yeah?" he asks, setting the food bowl down in front of Godric before returning to the couch.

"Well, I mean, _clearly_, they did not think this plan through," she explains. "Which I think they sort of started to understand tonight, but… I mean, really, it could've been _so _much worse. We could've ended up as one of those couples that breaks up and can't stand to be in the same room together and make everyone feel _so _awkward when they're around us, and how horrible would _that _have been to deal with?"

"So what are you suggesting here?" He thinks he might know where she's going with this, and he fucking loves it, but he doesn't want to get ahead of himself without hearing it from her first.

The grin she gives him is practically devilish. "We make them deal with that."

"So you're suggesting that we pretend we actually hate each other now and make everyone else we work with feel super awkward to mess with Marlene and Padfoot?"

"It sounds a little ridiculous when you phrase it like that, but - "

"It sounds absolutely brilliant," he finishes. "Not to mention absolutely hilarious."

"We should probably warn Dumbledore though," she says. "Given his whole thing about not letting our personal lives affecting the quality of our work, he should know that this is all just a show."

Of course her very first concern is making sure they don't disappoint their boss.

But James has an even better idea. "Better yet, let's bring Dumbledore into the show."

For as serious as their captain is most of the time, he _loves _the opportunity to get in on an inside joke and cause a little chaos. This is absolutely right up his alley.

Lily recognises that too and her face lights up. "Oh my god, _yes_ \- that's perfect! I'll message him now - " she pauses, looks out the window at the pitch-black night, and rethinks that, "or maybe tomorrow morning instead."

"Probably good," he agrees. "I don't imagine waking him up at 4 a.m. would particularly endear him to our cause."

"Oh god," she says, moving to get up from the couch, "is it really that late? I should get home."

He catches her wrist before she can walk away. "Evans, you can't." She raises an eyebrow at him, and he revises his words. "I mean, you _can_, but you walked over here in the middle of the night and I'd really prefer if you didn't walk back in the middle of the night as well."

She relaxes into his touch. "I… yeah, okay, you make a good point."

"I do make those occasionally."

Godric meows again, and James decides to take that as a sign of agreement.

* * *

When his alarm goes off, the first thing he notices is that Lily isn't in his arms anymore like she was when they fell asleep. Any worry is very quickly dissolved, however, because he realises she's just sitting up in bed a few inches away from him, tapping away on her phone.

"Dumbledore's in," she says, as soon as she notices that he's awake.

It takes him a moment to process what she's even talking about, before he remembers the plan they'd discussed last night.

"You texted our captain at 7:30 in the morning? Isn't that a bit early?" he asks groggily, propping himself up on his elbows.

She scoffs. "_Please_. Dumbledore wakes up at 6:05 every morning - 7:30 is child's play."

Really, he should've known.

"So the plan is on then?" he confirms.

She looks over at him, grinning. "The plan is on."

* * *

Acting has never particularly been James' strong suit, but he'll pick up a talent in just about anything in pursuit of a workplace ruse.

Which means that falling into character is remarkably easy for him; when he arrives at the precinct and Lily's first response is to pointedly look away from him, he responds by intentionally taking the long way to his desk so that he doesn't have to walk by hers. He doesn't look at her once as he sits down at his desk and turns his computer on. No 'good morning' like usual, nada.

"Sirius, can I borrow a pen?" Lily's voice rings clearly through the precinct.

"There's one right there on Prongs' desk," his friend answers.

"Well, I don't _want _that one," Lily replies petulantly, and James is glad no one can see his face from here because it's harder than he expected to fight off the laugh at that. She sounds _so _petty, and it's perfect.

"Okay, uh, here, you can have this one," Sirius eventually manages, and it takes a lot of self-control for James not to turn around and see the look on Sirius' face. Or anyone else's face, for that matter. He wants to know if they've gotten a reaction out of any of them yet, purely for his own satisfaction.

But he keeps his eyes steadfastly trained on his own computer, not wanting to threaten the ruse even a little bit this early in the game.

He's trying to think up their next move, the next little step they can take to build on the energy they've already created, but ultimately, he doesn't even have to do that. It's done for him.

Captain Dumbledore emerges from his office, and makes a beeline for Lily's desk.

"Evans, you emailed me about getting a new partner for the Crouch-Lestrange case?" he asks, and for the first time all morning, James looks over at Lily. From the brief look of surprise on her face - that lasts for only half a second, so he's pretty sure he's the only one who saw it - she didn't email Dumbledore; this is all the Captain's work.

"Yes sir, I did," she replies, catching on and playing along easily.

"I'm afraid I can't help you with that - no one else has any capacity for any additional cases, and I fail to see why Potter is no longer a suitable partner."

"I can name a lot of reasons why he's not a suitable partner," Lily grumbles. It's a stage-grumble though, which means it's loud enough for the entire room to hear.

The precinct is quiet enough to hear a pin drop, and there are even more awkward glances exchanged among their coworkers from behind Dumbledore's back.

James is also wholly uncontent to be a bystander at this point; this prank is entirely too much fun for him to sit on the sidelines any longer. "Would you like to list them all off to my face?" he asks dryly, and he's almost impressed with how convincing he sounds.

"I would like to, yes, but in the interest of professionalism, I will not," she says, turning to him for the first time all morning. Her eyes are positively sparkling, betraying all the humour in the situation that the rest of her face is masking.

"Perhaps we should, ah, continue this conversation in my office," Dumbledore says, his eyes flitting between the two of them.

"Yes, sir," Lily replies, getting up from her chair. James mimics the action, and they both follow the captain into his office. As soon as James shuts the door, Dumbledore speaks again.

"Tell me, what did everyone's faces look like?" It's delivered in his traditional monotone, but James is _pretty _sure this is his excited monotone.

"Remus looked like we were a car crash and he couldn't turn away," Lily reports, not bothering to conceal a grin since she's facing the desk.

"I'm pretty sure even Mary looked concerned, which is… really something," James adds.

"Good, good," Dumbledore says, nodding.

He folds his hands on the desk and leans forward. "The blinds are halfway open which means half the office is watching us right now, one of you needs to make a very visible show of frustration… _now_."

James rakes his hand through his hair, leaving it there as he turns to face Lily. "Is this good enough?"

"Could've perhaps played it up a little more," the captain replies candidly, "but it will certainly do the job. Now, I'm going to stand up and angrily point to the door, and you two will file out, looking shameful."

He is _definitely _having way too much fun with this.

Lily and James both file out of the office. He practically throws himself into his chair when he gets out to his desk - probably a little more dramatic than is strictly necessary, but fuck it, it feels like the right sort of thing to do.

The bullpen is… dead silent. Which is a complete rarity, because even 'quiet' moments at the precinct generally still amount to what the average person would consider a dull roar, so the fact that it's happened twice today is even rarer than someone making Mary smile. The tension in the air is palpable - which is something James never thought he'd be _quite _this thrilled about.

"Looks like you're stuck with me - what a misfortune that must be," James comments acidly, surprising even himself with the level of bitterness in his tone.

"Well, at least maybe try to avoid making any bets on us catching Lestrange," she replies, matching his coldness and then some. "Lord knows if you do we'll _really _be doomed to failure."

He's stunned into speechlessness by that; his inability to form a reply likely comes across to everyone else as offense, when in reality he's just generally shocked by her brilliance in coming up with that line to begin with.

"That's a bit rich, isn't it?" he eventually answers, sitting back down at his desk.

"Don't try me today, Potter."

"Wasn't planning on it, Evans."

He turns his attention to work, rather satisfied in the level of discomfort they've created in the room so far. Based on the look on Marlene's face when the two of them walked out of the Captain's office, everything is working _exactly _as intended.

* * *

They manage to keep up the act over the next few hours, each occasionally making a comment or gesture that clearly indicates how much they can't stand each other and generally plunging everyone into another round of awkwardness. It's by far the strangest energy they've ever had in the precinct, and it's brilliantly satisfying to know that _they did this_.

It's just after lunch when James' phone buzzes. Lily's name pops up on his screen again, and he glances over at her desk to discover that she's nowhere to be found.

**_meet me in the supply room in 5?_**

_sure, what do you need_

**_you ;)_**

James tries to set his phone down casually and look nonchalant, but he spends the next five minutes rather antsy, and then makes a beeline for the supply closet as soon as is acceptable.

He's not really sure what she's got up her sleeve, but her message has a pretty clear immediate interpretation that he would very much like to be the correct one. And the accompanying winking face all but cements it.

Lily's standing in the middle of the room waiting for him when he arrives, and she smiles at him when he shuts the door behind him.

He walks over to her. "Hi."

"Hi," she responds, before wrapping her arms around his neck. "We've been fake-fighting all day, I figured we needed to counteract that for a little bit."

"We do?"

"Mmhmm," she nods, gently running her fingers through the hair on the back of his head. "So kiss me, yeah?"

She doesn't need to ask him twice - he leans down and kisses her, and the little hum of satisfaction she makes as his lips meet hers only serves to egg him on further, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close.

He's so lost in it that he doesn't even hear the supply room door open.

"James, are you in - "

The two of them spring apart just a second too late, and as such are caught in an incredibly compromising position by Peter. His eyes are wide, and he looks like he's forgotten how to breathe properly.

"Are you guys - did you just - "

He trails off, and James realises half a second too late that said trailing-off has occurred because Peter has fainted. And as he falls to the ground, he knocks over a stack of boxes, resulting in an exceptionally noisy clattering that no doubt the entire bullpen has heard.

"_Fuck_," James swears, partially because his friend has just passed out but mostly because their ruse has almost certainly come to an end. Everyone will come in soon enough, and Peter will almost definitely out the two of them, and the two of them being in the supply room alone is incriminating enough as it is.

He's just starting to think through how they're going to explain themselves when he hears a clatter behind him. He turns back to the source of the noise to see that Lily is… gone?

After a moment, he realises the noise came from the now-slightly-ajar air duct. He's got no idea when on earth she would've picked up that particular trick, but by god, it's fucking brilliant.

He has to resist the urge to grin at her genius, because the supply closet door opens and half the precinct is there now - and James should probably act at least a little more concerned by Peter's state.

He crouches down next to Peter, making a show of checking on him. Pete's rather prone to fainting spells, so truthfully James isn't _all _that concerned; this is really just par for the course anyways.

Peter comes to in a few moments - at which point basically the entire precinct has funneled into the supply closet with some version of 'what happened in here' - and as soon as he does, his eyes resemble saucers as he looks at James in shock.

"Oh my god," he stammers. "_You_. And _Lily_. You were - "

James furrows his brow, feigning confusion. "What are you talking about? Lily and I aren't _anything_."

"But I saw you!" Peter exclaims. "You were in here making out!"

"Pete, did you hit your head on the way down?" James asks, cocking his head to the side. "I didn't think you did, but maybe on one of the boxes?"

"I didn't hit my head - I saw you two!"

"How would that even be possible? Lily's not even in here." He looks around the room to make a show of it.

And right on schedule, a somewhat-breathless Lily appears at the doorway. James could almost kiss her for her perfect timing - although admittedly, kissing her was what got them into this situation to begin with, so maybe not.

"Is everything okay? I heard a loud noise and when I got out to the bullpen I noticed that everyone was gone."

"Everything is fine, Evans," James replies, almost dismissively. "Wormtail here just had a bit of a fainting spell that caused him to dream up a scenario that couldn't possibly have existed."

Peter, for his part, looks absolutely bewildered, turning his head from the space he'd seen Lily last to her new location, trying to figure out how the hell to reconcile the two conflicting pieces of evidence.

"But, but, but - "

"You sure you're all good, Pete?" James asks, turning his attention back to his friend again. "We can call for medical help if you need."

His friend shakes his head. "No, I'm fine," he says, and lets James help him up to his feet. "But _god_, that sure was real fucking weird. It felt so real, you know?"

"Part of me really does wish it was real, buddy," James replies, putting on his best dejected tone. It's probably a bit much that he's not only tricked Peter - and everyone else in the room, too - into believing he's completely imagined a very real thing that he actually saw, and _now _he's playing it off like he's still a little heartbroken, but this charade is too much fun to temper it in any way.

From the doorway, Lily scoffs, and James glares at her.

And just like that, they've succeeded in making everything incredibly awkward again. Mission accomplished.

Once everyone has dissipated, James returns to his desk, because even though he would've liked to resume the thing he was doing _before_ Peter had come in, he doesn't have faith that they'd be so lucky as to come up with a perfect cover-up twice.

Lily's sitting at her desk looking at case files when he gets back to his own desk; he's pretty sure they're relevant to the Lestrange case, so he texts her to ask about them. He's been doing that a lot today - texting her or emailing her about the case so that they can still maintain their usual level of productivity despite the office ruse.

She'd never want to sacrifice actual work for the sake of a prank, and when the work is this important, he gets that.

_reading anything interesting?_

**_not really_**

**_mostly just thinking about crouch_**

_fantasising about his weird tongue thing?_

**_OH MY GOD_**

**_NO_**

**_that's just_**

**_i don't have words_**

_:P_

**_you have ruined that emoji for me_**

_:P_

**_ANYWAYS_**

**_i was thinking about one of the things he said_**

**_that lestrange doesn't give up on a hit_**

**_so like… that means she's almost definitely going to try to go after the longbottoms again_**

_well yeah, that's why they're in protection now_

**_but lestrange doesn't know that, in all likelihood_**

**_so what are the chances that she's just waiting to strike again once they reappear_**

_idk, pretty high i'd guess?_

**_well, i have an idea_**

**_i'll tell you in person in a little bit _**

**_it's a bit much to get into over text i think_**

**_but also this is a damn good idea and i don't want to tell you when i know you're going to have to fake-hate it_**

_ah, yeah_

_also on that note_

_just out of curiosity_

_how long are we keeping this up for?_

**_oh, just until the end of the day maybe?_**

**_i don't know how many more close calls we'll be able to avoid_**

**_and getting caught really ruins the fun of the reveal_**

_too true_

**_any ideas of how to actually end it?_**

_hmm, i think i've got something_

_just play along, yeah?_

**_i can do that_**

He reacts to her last message with a heart, then gets back to work. Or, more accurately, fucking around to avoid doing the paperwork he knows he's still got to fill out before the day is over.

He's really rather curious about whatever it is that Lily's managed to cook up in her mind, but he doesn't dare ask her just yet. No, he can get that information from her later tonight. Right now, he's just trying to make it to the end of the day maintaining their frosty silence with one another. Because once they hit the end of the day, they're going to give everyone in the precinct whiplash, and it's going to be the best way to close this day out.

Once 5:00 rolls around, before anyone has actually made it out the door, James gets up and walks over to Lily's desk.

"Ready to go?" he asks.

She turns around, studies him for a second, and instantly seems to know where he's going with this. "Perfect timing, babe," she replies, smiling at him. "I just finished up."

He extends his hand to her, and she takes it. The whole room is dead silent yet again, and neither of them acknowledge it at all.

At least, not until they get into the elevator and the doors close behind them, at which point they both start laughing hysterically and can't seem to stop.

"Did you _see _Kingsley's face?" Lily asks in between giggles.

"Did _you _see _Sirius's_?" James retorts, unable to stop picturing the simultaneously confused and horrified expression on his best friend's face.

His phone dings once, twice, three times, which means someone - or maybe more than one person, in all likelihood - has undoubtedly texted him to ask him what the fuck they just witnessed.

"We really do make a damn good team, Potter," Lily tells him, as soon as she's regained some of her composure. They're in the downstairs lobby now, hands still intertwined as they weave through people to get out of the building.

"I feel like we should celebrate a job well done, you know," he says. "Go get ice cream maybe? Or, uh, a drink?"

She laughs again at that. "I love that your first thought was ice cream, and _then _alcohol."

"I feel like I've got my priorities straight."

"Hmm, I might be inclined to agree with you," she says. "Alternatively, we could have both at once and go to that place that sells alcoholic popsicles?"

"They sell _what_?" How is he only just now hearing about this?

She grins. "Oh yes, we're definitely going there," she replies. "They are an _experience._"

"Well then," he squeezes her hand, "lead the way."


	11. stay stay stay

"So all of it was just one big prank?"

Lily nods, paying for her latte. "Yep."

"And you and James actually made up and are together again?"

She nods a second time. "Yep."

Marlene laughs loudly, completely disturbing the relative peace of the coffee shop they've decided to meet up at before work. "My god, I still cannot _believe_ you managed to pull that off - _and _that you got Dumbly in on it too!"

"That was the easiest part, honestly," Lily replies. "The hardest part was sneaking out of the supply closet through the air vent and coming out in the men's bathroom to avoid blowing the whole thing too early. Luckily no one was in there, because _god_, that would've been weird."

"I'm still just… in disbelief about all of it. You two were _so_ convincing."

They really were, weren't they? Lily had surprised herself in how perfectly easy it was to pull off the whole thing, and how well she and James worked as a team in the very specific setting of pranking all of their coworkers.

And also how easily they'd fallen right out of it as soon as the jig was up; she knows they're still working on rebuilding the things they'd messed up by literally betting against one another, but the fact that being together still feels so natural is hopefully evidence that they're going to recover from it.

"Yeah, well, you know James," she eventually answers. "He takes office shenanigans _very _seriously. The moment I brought up the idea of us turning everything back on the rest of you, he was all in."

"Honestly, I think we're all probably very lucky that the two of you won't be in the same office for much longer. Between James' dedication to causing mayhem and your craftiness, the rest of us would just be fucked."

Marlene grabs her coffee from the counter, and Lily laughs. "I think we're done causing mayhem," she tells her friend. "We just needed to have a little fun with all of it first."

"Well you definitely got your wish. I'm pretty sure Dumbledore was dying in his office watching all of us try to figure out what the fuck we'd just witnessed after the two of you left."

Technically, Lily already knew that. Dumbledore had sent her a video of it all, accompanied with the background noise of the captain giggling to himself the entire time. It's perhaps the only time she's ever heard him laugh like that.

"The ending was all James' idea - I just went along with it."

"Well, still - brilliant."

Lily grabs her freshly prepared coffee from the counter, and the two of them go off to find a seat in the corner.

They've settled down at a table when Marlene looks at her, somewhat apprehensively. "I hate to bring this up right now, but like, you _do _realise this means you lost the bet, right?"

"Yep," Lily nods, surprisingly way more okay with this admission than she thought she'd be. "So did James, technically."

Marlene thinks about that for a second. "Oh, I guess he did, didn't he? 'Love' was quite a high bar for ten days, after all."

Lily won't admit it aloud - because hell, she's still not ready to fully admit it in her own head either - but there is… a non-zero chance that that's a bar she's rapidly approaching. It'd be one thing if this were a guy she'd just met, but she's known James for _years_ \- she's just getting to know him better and in new ways now. There's something a little deeper there than just honeymoon-phase infatuation.

"Do you know what he has to do for losing his? Now that I think about it, I don't think we ever talked about that part."

Marlene snorts. "So hilariously, that wasn't even a thing we coordinated, but… he _also _has to sit through one of Peter's homemade cheese tastings."

"Oh god."

"Maybe you two can do it together? That sounds like a… romantic date, right?" Marlene visibly cringes as she says that.

"Yeah, I'm not too sure about romance, but would definitely be an interesting bonding experience," Lily replies, taking a sip of her coffee. "Also, you know, misery loves company and all - at least I wouldn't have to listen to Pettigrew's spiel about the flavor profile differences between bleu and gorgonzola alone."

"True," she concedes, before changing the subject. "Also, I _still_ can't believe it's your last day today. The whole precinct is going to be _so_ weird."

"I mean, I won't be fully gone just yet, I don't think - Dumbledore didn't want me to have to hand off any of my active cases if I didn't have to, so I'll probably still be around a little bit helping Potter with the Lestrange case for a bit longer."

Marlene nods. "Yeah, fair. Still weird though - it really won't be the same without you. At the very least, it'll be a hell of a lot less productive, that's for sure."

"Shouldn't you be excited for that?" Lily teases. "I thought you hated when everyone else in the precinct was working too much?"

"I mean, _yes_, because sometimes you guys can be boring as shit when you're all working too hard, but also, sometimes I just need everyone to shut up for a little bit and I don't know who else other than Dumbledore can make everyone stop being annoying quite as effectively as you. Especially James - I'm pretty sure you're the _only _person he'll listen to."

Lily laughs. "Just text me if he's being a nuisance - I'll do my best to put him in his place from afar."

Marlene clutches her hand to her heart dramatically, nearly knocking over her drink in the process. "My hero."

* * *

It doesn't _feel _like her last day. She keeps having to actively remind herself of that fact, because the other half of her brain is convinced that this is just another work day, and she'll be right back here on Monday morning.

She's excited, sure, and this is the best thing for her career and her life plans, but… she'll miss this place. It'll always have a special place in her heart, because the people here have somehow morphed into some of her best friends.

James - who's in early today - looks up as she and Marlene walk in, flashing a grin at both of them.

"Nice work yesterday, Potter," Marlene says as a greeting.

"Thank you," James replies, doing a miniature bow from his desk chair. Marlene laughs at that, before going to her desk.

He turns to Lily. "Happy last day, Evans. How does it feel, knowing this is the last time you'll have to deal with any of us?"

"You say that like we don't already have plans to see a movie together on Sunday." She walks around him to take a seat at her desk. "I'm not done dealing with you just yet."

"And thank god for that," he agrees. "I revise my previous statement - how does it feel, knowing this is the last day you'll have to deal with the chaos that is the 73rd Precinct?"

"A little bittersweet, I'd say," she answers.

"Well, hopefully you'll get some proper excitement on your last day as a send-off."

"I think we might've hit the excitement limit yesterday. I'm not sure how we can top that."

He smirks. "Never say never, Evans. Never underestimate this place."

"I could never," she replies solemnly, before cracking a grin.

He looks down at the papers on his desk, then back up at her. "We're still checking out the Longbottom's apartment today, yeah?"

"Yeah," she answers. "We can go whenever you're ready."

When she told James her idea yesterday after work, he'd been all over it. Essentially, they're just going to visit the Longbottom's apartment - but Lily _also_ has an inkling that there may be more to it. There's a good chance Lestrange herself is keeping tabs on the apartment in some way, waiting for Frank and Alice to make a reappearance, and some activity near there might serve to draw her out.

"I, uh, didn't actually finish my paperwork yesterday," James admits. "And Shacklebolt will definitely kill me if I don't get it handled this morning, so… we can go after that."

Classic.

"Sounds good - don't procrastinate for the _entire _day though," she says.

"I can't believe you think so little of my punctuality," he replies, feigning offense.

"I mean… it's already late to begin with, so you've already proven my point." She smirks at him, and he laughs.

"Fair enough. I'll take that one."

But fortunately, James only takes a little over an hour to get the task done - and then they're getting in a patrol car to make the trip over to the Longbottom's now-abandoned apartment.

They briefly entertain the idea of fully going into disguise as Frank and Alice, but eventually decide to only put about half the effort in. They're going there to scope the place out to potentially set up a trap should Lestrange try to go after the now-hidden Longbottoms again, so there's not really a need for them to fully lean into looking like the two of them. They do go for civilian clothing though, just in case Lestrange is in fact monitoring the place - that way they'll have a better shot of catching her than if she can immediately identify them as cops.

They play music loudly on the drive over to the apartment complex Frank and Alice live at - or used to live at, before going into hiding. The building is largely unassuming, just yet another high rise in the middle of the city.

They park the car down the street, and when the radio cuts off, Lily feels an edge of anxiety creep into her thoughts. She's not sure why - there's not much of a chance they're going to run into anything dangerous yet, they're just making a quick visit - but the unease won't dissipate.

They get out of the car and walk up to the building.

"You ready for this, Evans?" He's wearing a cheeky grin, but there's a seriousness in his eyes as well. Maybe he feels it too - the fact that, even though this is just following a hunch rather than stone cold evidence, something about it feels like they're almost certainly walking into a danger zone right now.

"Ready as I'll ever be," she answers.

She reaches out, grabs his hand, gives it a squeeze, and drops it again. She just needs that little moment before anything else happens, that little reassurance. And maybe he needs it too.

The inside of the apartment complex is nothing special either, and there's nothing majorly out of the ordinary as they walk down the hallway leading to the Longbottom's flat. But when Lily reaches out for the door handle, she's surprised to find that it turns with ease.

And that sets off all sorts of mental alarms; Alice and Frank didn't seem like the type to leave their place unlocked.

Sure enough, her suspicions are confirmed almost as soon as she and James step into the apartment. They've only just closed the door behind them when -

"I've been waiting for you two," a voice echoes lazily from… some place in the flat that's obscured from view. The voice is so casual and cold all at once, sending a chill up Lily's spine.

"You have, have you?" James replies, not missing a beat.

There's a gunshot, and a bullet hits the wall not two inches from James' head.

_Fuck_.

The very same woman Lily remembers chasing down a few days ago comes into view, taking aim with the gun in her hand for the second time.

"Oh, no, you're not who I was waiting for," she says, looking at the two of them. "But you'll do for now, I suppose."

The last detail Lily vividly remembers is the unhinged sort of look in her eyes, like this is all some sort of perverted thrill for her.

Everything else becomes a blur - it always does, in moments like this, when her whole body is amped up on adrenaline and everything seems to be happening in slow motion and hyperspeed all at once. She'll struggle to recount the exact details of what happens in that apartment, but at some point it takes both her and James to get a highly resistant Lestrange into handcuffs, her gun on the floor on the other side of the room.

She vaguely recognises that the spot on her thigh where Bellatrix landed a solid kick on will turn into a nasty bruise eventually, and James is already showing the beginnings of a black eye from an errant elbow.

James recites her Miranda rights automatically, not that Lestrange really seems to care much, given that she's still trying her damnedest to resist him. At some point, they really should've called for back-up, but things started moving fast all too quickly for that, and she's not sure it's worth getting back-up just to get her into the car.

Between the two of them, they do manage somehow, even though Lestrange is clearly trying to be as difficult and uncooperative as possible. There's a stony silence in the car as they drive back to the precinct, where everything that just happened really sinks in properly.

Specifically the bullet that came right at James, which she hadn't really had a chance to process at the time.

That was… _god_.

If he'd been standing in a slightly different place, or Lestrange's aim would've been just a little better, the outcome could've been drastically different than what it is now.

Her mind's still pretty occupied with that even as they book Lestrange in and get to work on all the post-arrest paperwork; she knows that fixating on it won't do anything, and there's no way it could _actually _do anything to him now, but…

She's just glad he's safe.

She tells him such as soon as they have a moment of peace.

"I mean, I'm pretty damn glad of that too," he replies, grinning in a way that suggests he's taking it as a joke. Or maybe more accurately, he's making it into a joke, because that's what he generally tends to do with distressing situations.

"You know what I mean," she tells him, nudging her with his shoulder.

"Lestrange's first shot, yes," he replies. "We don't need to talk about that though - nothing happened, and there's no point dwelling on it."

It hits her in that moment, that James really is _so _good for her. They're opposites in so many ways, but in ways that balance out for the better. He's a bit _too _lackadaisical and free-spirited sometimes, and she's perhaps (definitely) a bit _too _high-strung and neurotic. But between the two of them, it works out to something of a sweet spot. His attitude serves to melt some of her nerves away.

She thinks about that for a beat longer, before looking at him. "I have to say, this is not what I meant when I said we needed to top yesterday's excitement."

He barks out a laugh at that. "Never a dull day, I told you that."

"Isn't it the truth though," she agrees.

* * *

News about the Lestrange arrest has already spread through the precinct by the time James and Lily get back to their desks.

"Heard you guys had a real fun one this morning," Sirius says when they walk in. "And my bitch cousin is hopefully getting locked up for a _long _time."

"On Crouch's testimony, you're probably right," Lily replies.

"It's just a good thing your cousin has even worse aim than you," James adds, earning himself a wadded up paper ball thrown at his head.

Sirius nods to the spot on James' temple that he just hit. "My aim is excellent, thank you very much."

James bends over and picks up the paper ball. "Still not as good as mine," he says, before flinging the ball across the room, where it very neatly lands in Mary's coffee.

She doesn't even look up from her work as she picks the paper ball out of her mug and drops it in the trash can. "Next time you try that I will _murder _you, Potter."

He grins, self-satisfied. "I know you will."

Lily finds her seat, but swivels her chair around to face everyone instead of turning back to her desk. She doesn't have much to do workwise anymore, and it seems like everyone's set on treating this like a chill Friday anyways.

"So… when do we get to make you two pay for losing?"

Maybe she _should've _turned back to her work.

James just shrugs, falling into his seat. "Doesn't matter to me."

"How quick can you have a cheese plate ready, Wormtail?" Sirius asks.

Peter shrugs. "I have a pretty constant stock, so I can curate one based on my collection at any time."

Sirius nods. "That is very helpful information."

There's a look in his eyes that Lily doesn't trust. Granted, she doesn't trust most looks from him, but this one's extra suspicious.

"Hey, so, uhh, has anyone seen the staplers?" Remus asks, changing the subject entirely. He's shuffling some papers on his desk, clearly the only one with any real intent to work right now.

"You mean the ones we all stapled into the ceiling that one time?"

Lily actually remembers that prank relatively fondly. It had been quite a sight to come in one morning to see twenty or so black staplers hanging from the ceiling like some weird avant-garde art installation.

"Well not those exact ones, but just… you know, _a _stapler I can use," Remus answers.

"You all lost your stapler privileges after that incident," Kingsley chimes in, reminding them all of the aftermath of that particular event. "Just like you lost vending machine privileges that one time, and Lily lost toaster privileges for a year."

"In my defense, I had no idea that would catch on fire like that," Lily quickly defends. "There's nothing in the instruction manual to suggest that kind of behavior is dangerous."

It's important to her that she reminds everyone of that detail whenever it's brought up - the toaster thing was _not _her fault, it was whoever decided to write an instruction manual without enough proper warnings.

Remus steers them back on course again. "So where do I get a stapler from then?"

"They're in the captain's office, so you're going to have to ask Dumble-diddy-dumpkins about that one," Marlene says, and Lily's eyes almost immediately snap to the very subject of that comment, who's standing not five feet behind Marlene's desk.

Lily isn't the one one who notices though - she _can't_ be.

"What did you just call me?" His voice is so flat that Lily can't even begin to discern the feeling behind it.

The entire precinct comes to a stuttering halt at the sound of Dumbledore's voice, and he walks up behind Marlene like he's just appeared out of thin air. Marlene's eyes go comically wide, but she says nothing.

The captain seems to think for a moment. "Dumble-diddy-dumpkins. Hm. I think I'll make that my new nickname."

And then he walks straight back into his office.

The silence persists. Lily can't read anyone's mind, but she's pretty sure they're all on the same page - that _had _to have been a hallucination, there's _no way _that actually just happened.

After what feels like at least a year, Peter breaks. "Does that mean we _all _get to start calling him that now?"

"Only if you have a death wish, Wormtail," Remus replies. "Only if you have a death wish. Anyone have a paper clip instead?"

* * *

The rest of the day feels a bit surreal. Not only because the entire morning feels like it might've happened in an entirely different universe than the one they're in right now, but also because it still just doesn't quite feel real that she's packing up her desk and leaving this place for good.

As she puts the last of her desk decorations into a box to be sent over to her new location, she stares at the now-empty desk, the sight of it exceptionally bittersweet.

"Whatever poor soul gets that desk next has a _lot _to live up to," James says, and she turns to see that he's looking at her, eyes reading her like an open book. "I don't know if anyone else is worthy of having their desk connected to mine."

"I doubt you'll find someone who's quite as willing to put up with your clownery," she replies, not bothering to conceal the affectionate smile on her face.

"In this place?" James laughs. "They'll have to _learn_ to put up with it if they want to survive. My clownery is only the tip of the iceberg."

"That poor soul."

"Hey now, I think we pack a healthy dose of efficacy and fuckery around here - if anything, that poor soul is going to have their life improved significantly by being here, even if they _are _filling some pretty big shoes."

She has to admit - he has a good point. For all her joking barbs, this place has absolutely shaped her into the person she is today, taught her that it's okay to let go every once in a while (_very _rarely, but still), and brought some really great people into her life.

"Yeah, I think they'll manage just fine around here," she eventually agrees. "Just don't go falling for _every_ person who takes the desk next to yours."

"Nah," he says, grinning easily. "That one's reserved just for you."

"Well, that's reassuring," she tells him.

"The same goes for you, you know," he replies, getting up and joining her where she's standing, "you're not allowed to start dating one of your detectives."

"You're safe there too."

She's definitely a little too far gone on him to even _consider_ anyone else.

"Hey, want to come over to mine?" he asks, and it's said in that sort of forced casual way that suggests he's definitely been planning to ask this for a while now.

Of course, she'd also been entertaining the idea of inviting _him_ over, so really, they're both on the same page anyways.

"Sure," she replies, sliding her hand into his.

But if James had any specific plans in mind when inviting her over, they're very quickly ruined.

Well, more specifically, she ruins them.

They're barely through the doorway of his apartment before she kisses him, and he escalates it from there. She soon finds herself pressed between James and the wall as he runs his hands down her sides, untucking her shirt and teasing his fingers under it.

It's exactly where she wants to be.

He's halfway into pulling her top off when he pauses suddenly, pulling back and looking into her eyes.

"Just, uhh, checking - the whole 'no sex' rule doesn't actually apply anymore, right?"

A laugh bubbles out of her at the way that he's trying so hard to be nonchalant and failing at it miserably. "No, it definitely doesn't."

The look of relief on his face is almost comical. "Thank _god._"

Lily has to agree with him on that one. She has no intention of holding anything back anymore when it comes to him. And this is one area where she _absolutely _doesn't want to hold back in the slightest.

He pulls her shirt off the rest of the way, his hand tracing over her body as soon as her skin is exposed. It's different than the last time in a way; he doesn't touch her like he's afraid he's never going to get to do it again. He doesn't need to memorise her now, because she's not going anywhere any time soon.

In a move so quick she doesn't even notice it at first, he unfastens her trousers and dips his hand beneath the waistband. He touches her, oh-so-gently, over her underwear, but it's still enough to coax a gasp out of her, and an instinctive reaction of grinding her hips against his hand.

"Someone's impatient," James comments mildly, like he's talking about the weather and not the fact that he's got his hand down her pants.

She wants to say something snarky in return, but the sad truth of the matter is that she can't even _think _about forming words right now. So she sets about a different sort of mission, which is making James just as impatient as she is.

She rolls her hips against his a few more times, and on the third time, he abandons his current task in favor of pulling her trousers off completely. Which, of course, introduces a separate problem.

"_Shit!_" she swears loudly, when he bumps into the spot on her thigh that Lestrange hit earlier.

He freezes. "Are you okay?"

She nods, the pain fading away now. "Yeah, I'm good. Lestrange just landed a good kick on me earlier that's still a little tender."

"Ah," James replies, dropping to his knees in front of her to finish taking her trousers off, a tad more gently this time. His eyes find the spot she was referring to - approximately the size of a baseball and in shades of black and blue - and he gently presses his lips to the skin right above it.

"Were you just attempting to kiss it better?" Lily asks, watching him almost disbelievingly.

He looks up at her, smirking. "Depends. Did it work?"

"Debatable."

He moves up slightly, kissing her over her underwear. "What about now?"

"That's _definitely _making things better," she replies, her breath catching in her throat as one of his hands joins his mouth, sliding underneath the fabric this time. "Although it's a bit unfair that you've stripped me down completely and you're still fully dressed."

He hums, his mouth still against her skin in a way that sends vibrations through her body. "And what are you going to do about it?"

That really shouldn't turn her on as much as it does.

She grabs him by the shirt collar, pulling him up to standing, and then starts working through the buttons of his shirt as fast as physically possible. And then moves straight on to undoing his belt.

"This," she eventually answers. "This is what I'm doing about it."

His shirt comes off, and she's undoing his trousers, when he unexpectedly picks her up and guides her legs to wrap around his waist, carefully avoiding the bruise on her thigh this time.

"If we go any farther here we're not making it to a bed," he tells her, moving towards the bedroom with her still wrapped around him.

"Would that really be such a bad thing?" she asks coyly, kissing along his jawline.

He groans, and it's not clear whether that reaction is from her words or her actions. "Given Godric's proclivity for interrupting us at the worst moments, I'm actually going to go with yes - that _would_ be a bad thing."

As soon as they're in his bedroom and he's nudged the door shut behind them with his foot, he sets her down again. She finishes the job of removing his trousers, and he steps out of both them and his shoes all at once.

When she kisses him again, she takes control this time, walking them both back towards the bed until James falls onto it, pulling her down with him. She nearly knees him in the side as she lands on him and his glasses get knocked off-kilter by the force of the impact, but they're both too preoccupied to care about clumsiness.

At some point, he unhooks her bra, and it's so smooth she doesn't even notice him doing it until the straps fall off her shoulders. The way he flings it across the room is decidedly less smooth, however.

"Hey, be careful with that," she warns. "That's one of my good bras."

"Then it's probably a good thing I got it very far out of our way," he replies, donning a cocky smirk before pulling her close to him again and caressing her newly exposed skin in a way that sends shockwaves to her core.

"Are you suggesting you're going to manhandle me, Potter?" There's a distinct challenge in her voice, even though it's lessened slightly when he starts to kiss his way down her neck.

"I never really specified who's manhandling whom - but if that's what you want…" He rolls both of them over so that he's on top, then dips his head down to attend to her tits again.

Right now… yes, that's _exactly _what she wants.

Heat pools in her stomach as one of his hands drifts lower, lower, lower, until he's dipping two fingers underneath the lace of her underwear, touching her directly for the first time.

"Fuck," she says, and he echoes the sentiment almost simultaneously.

James is content to tease her for as long as possible, driving her absolutely mad with just the most delicate of touches. It feels like every inch of her skin is charged, and every touch builds it just a little bit more. But eventually, Lily's impatience gets the best of her, and suddenly gentle isn't enough.

Despite being under him, she still feels pretty good about her ability to take control of the situation, tugging his boxers down abruptly and wrapping her fingers around him, setting a pace that is nothing like the gentle movements he's been using on her.

"Lil - oh my _god_," he manages.

And then, a few moments later, "Okay, condom."

She grins wickedly as he rolls over to grab a condom from his nightstand, feeling pretty accomplished for her ability to get her way with him as she shimmies out of the last article of clothing left between them. He gets the condom on and returns to his place above her.

And with little preamble, he's inside of her.

"Fuck, you feel _so_ good," he says into her shoulder, not moving yet. That alone sends a thrill through her - the idea that he needs a moment to compose himself again because of her - and she laces her fingers through his hair, pulling his head up to hers so that she can kiss him properly.

When he does start moving again, it's in long, deep strokes that set something on fire inside of her. And when James' fingers find her clit, the fire becomes an inferno, consuming her from the inside out.

"You're - fuck - right there, _yes_," she babbles incoherently, dragging her nails down his back. He moans at the sensation of that - she has just enough wherewithal to make a mental note that he likes that, for future reference - and picks up the pace ever-so-slightly.

The change in pace is what does it for her, along with James' insistent touch, and she falls off the edge with one last ragged cry.

Her orgasm must do it for him as well, because he follows suit a few moments later.

She presses a soft kiss to his temple, then his cheekbone. "I like you _so _much," she whispers, unable to stop herself from smiling.

It's as much as she'll let herself say right now - there's another set of words on the tip of her tongue as well, but she's not going to speak those ones aloud just yet. She doesn't doubt that they _will _get said soon enough - how could they not - but right now… right now she's perfectly content with right where they are.

"I should hope so," comes James' reply, before he rolls off of her and goes into the bathroom.

It takes a minute, but when they're both back in bed again, Lily curled up against him, he adds on, "I like you so much too, in case that needed confirming."

"I wouldn't be mad about a little confirmation," she replies, grinning as she looks up at his face. "We both know how I feel about being complimented."

"We certainly do," he agrees, toying with her hair and gently dragging his fingers along her scalp.

It would be a perfect peaceful moment, except they're never allowed to have those. This time though, instead of a cat interruption, it's James' phone ringing.

"I'm going to ignore that," he says, clearly more occupied with his task of raking his fingers through her hair than with the incoming call. And she's not complaining one bit, because _fuck _does this feel heavenly.

It becomes much harder to ignore though, when it rings practically non-stop for five minutes.

"Fuck," James grumbles, slowly extracting himself from their current position. "That's definitely Sirius. And he won't stop calling until I answer."

He crosses the room, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his pants and putting it up to his ear. "Yes?" he asks impatiently.

Lily can only vaguely make out what's being said on the other side of the line, but it sounds a lot like '_be there in five minutes_.'

She's proven correct when James replies irritably with, "_Five_ minutes? You couldn't have given me at least a little more warning time?"

That's answered with a '_you would've had ten minutes if you picked up the first time_.'

"I - ugh - okay, great. See you in five minutes."

He hangs up the phone and looks at Lily. "We're about to have company," he tells her, not bothering to hide the fact that he is clearly less-than-thrilled about this development.

Hell, she is too - Sirius honestly couldn't have picked worsetiming. Well, maybe twenty minutes ago would've been worse, but _still_. She was quite content with the state of things before this.

Sirius is true to his word though - it's almost exactly five minutes later when there's a rapidfire knock on the door (she has no idea how he got past the security system at the entrance of James' building but she also really isn't surprised by it either). She's only just managed to get her clothes back on and ensure that it's not _instantly _obvious what they were up to before he announced his arrival.

But he's not the only one at the door; no, basically the entire fucking precinct is there, minus Kingsley and the captain. And Peter is bearing a _massive _plate, entirely covered in various cheeses.

"How convenient that both of you happened to be in the same place at once," Sirius grins, and there's a wicked glint in his eyes that suggests he _knew _they'd both be here somehow. "We've got a present for you."

"I added a few experimental ones to the tray!" Peter chimes in helpfully, before all of them invite themselves into James' apartment.

"I hope we weren't interrupting anything," Marlene says, and gives Lily a very knowing look that suggests that, despite her best attempts, she has not fully concealed the evidence of her and James' previous activities.

"Not at all," Lily replies, choosing to act like she doesn't understand the look at all. "I wasn't doing anything important."

James turns to her, looking comically affronted. "Excuse you, _I_ am _very _important."

Marlene bursts out into peals of laughter at that, and Remus smacks his hand to his forehead dramatically.

"I _knew _that's why you sounded so pissed when I said I was coming over," Sirius laughs, looking over at James. "I figured that was the only thing that would have you _that _annoyed by a surprise visit."

"Yeah, well, just be grateful I let you in instead of letting you knock for who knows how long while we went for another round," James responds, his hand ghosting over Lily's hip as he leaves her side to wander into the kitchen.

Mary mocks a gagging motion. "I know that acting like you were broken up and hated each other was supposed to be the torturous thing, but you two being all loved up and nauseating may actually be worse."

"Oh hush, Mary," Lily replies good-naturedly. "Just be happy you won a stupid bet and get to listen to me admit that you were right and I was wrong."

A ghost of a smile crosses over Mary's face. "That _is _a great thing to hear," she admits. "You should say it again."

"Nope," Lily says, shaking her head. "One time is all you're getting."

"Cabernet good, Evans?" James' voice rings out from the kitchen.

"What?"

He walks out, holding a bottle of red. "If we're doing a cheese-tasting, we might as well have wine with it, right?"

"Technically, the best wine for this selection is - "

"Cabernet's all I got, Wormtail."

Peter sighs, like he could think of nothing more disappointing than James' limited wine selection. "Fine. It'll do, I guess."

"Cabernet is perfect," Lily chimes in.

James comes out a few moments later holding two glasses of red wine, hands one to Lily, and looks at the rest of the group apologetically. "Sorry, I would've brought some for everybody, but I wasn't planning for company. Plus, you know, you're all just here to watch us suffer anyways, which I feel is hardly worthy of my hospitality."

"Oh shut it, you drama queen," Marlene replies, rolling her eyes. "But also, you really think we wouldn't have brought our _own _refreshments to enjoy the show?"

"Because we did." Remus holds up a cooler that's literally overflowing with drinks.

"You're the worst," James responds. "That's sadistic."

"Oh come on now, I know some of my recipes have… not quite gone according to plan, but I promise this isn't _actually _torture," Peter chimes in, properly defending himself and his cheesemaking hobby for the first time since these bets were made.

"Just… don't give me food poisoning, and I won't complain," Lily tells him, taking a generous swig of wine.

She refuses to spend the last weekend before her new job starts holed up over a toilet because one of Peter's recipes has backfired horrendously.

"I'm not a _complete_ amateur, I _can _promise that," Peter scoffs, like she's suggesting something so totally beneath him.

And so Lily takes a seat at James' table, and he takes the seat next to her. "Then let's do this."

The rest of the group takes up residence in the living room, sprawling out along the couch and on the floor. They're more engrossed in their own conversations than Peter's long speeches about each different cheese, and Lily vaguely hears a story about Mary's new throwing stars and Sirius reciting information from Wikipedia about giraffe sexuality in the background.

None of the cheese is actually all that bad - some are a little off in taste, but not _completely_ disgusting - and combined with the fact that she's pretty sure James fit half a bottle of wine into the glass he gave her, she's actually not even that upset about this punishment.

At one point James starts throwing cheese blocks and catching them with his mouth - to Peter's complete distress about ruining the aromatic experience - and Lily can't stop laughing at it. She still doesn't stop laughing when he switches gears to feeding her cheese blocks like they're newlyweds feeding each other wedding cake - which nearly results in her choking on cheese.

A sense of happy calm overtakes her, because the biggest stressor of the day - the fact that she's leaving behind a place she's loved for so many years - suddenly doesn't feel all that worrying anymore. Yes, she may be leaving behind a physical building and a desk, but she's not leaving any of these people behind. They're just as much a part of her life outside the workplace as they are in it, and she's not losing _that_ any time soon.

And as it turns out, she may not even be losing anything at all.

"Hey, Lily?" Remus asks from his spot on the floor. "You checked your work email lately?"

She looks over at him, puzzled. She knows she's a bit of a workaholic, but she makes a point not to look at her emails during off hours. "No, not since we left," she replies.

He grins conspiratorially - he definitely knows something that she doesn't. "You might want to check it - Umbridge sent out an announcement about the office reshuffling."

That doesn't apply to her though - it's only the 73rd Precinct that's getting used to house the officers from departments under construction - so she's not quite sure why Remus is singling _her _out from everyone.

But then she finds her phone and reads the email, and suddenly she understands.

"Looks like you haven't rid yourself of us yet," Sirius says cheerfully.

As it turns out, one of the precincts undergoing remodeling over the next few months is the 78th Precinct, her new one. And starting in two weeks, it's being moved right back into the 73rd for the duration of the construction.

"So it seems," she agrees. "I think the universe is just trying to tell me I'll never fully be able to escape you guys."

And looking around the room and then over at James, she thinks to herself that she's absolutely, one-hundred percent okay with that.


End file.
